There’s Only Two Sonny Boys
Sonny Boy Williamson #2 backstage at Birmingham Town Hall, photographed by Jim Simpson In the Blues world, the odd incident of larceny is not unknown. Poaching another bandleader’s sideman is…
Cadillac Jack
Sometime in the early 1970s I received a seven inch single along with a note from Andre Williams in Chicago who until that moment I had never heard of. The…
Henry’s Botanical Blueshouse Rides Again
Dateline Sunday 2pm: The first performance of the 2021 season of Henry’s Botanical Blueshouse. The Nitecrawlers opened their show precisely on time. So did the rain, but that was little…
The Blues are back at Henry’s Botanical Blueshouse
It seems a lot more than just a few months since Birmingham had its last shot of The Blues in October 2021 with the 36th Birmingham, Sandwell & Westside Jazz…
Remembering Tony Ashton
Tony Ashton was for much of his life a well – kept secret, respected by many of our finest musicians, but apart from his moment in the sun with his…
Shooting the Blues
We’re in the scary process of trying to put in some semblance of order the artefacts created by around 60 years of working in the music business. There are recordings…
Henry’s Old Boys
In 1968, John Michael Obsourne, Terence Michael Joseph Butler and William Thomas Ward from Aston, together with Anthony Frank Iommi from Handsworth, were playing The Blues as a band called…
Those Wild Women Who Sing The Blues
Listening to those self-assured early female blues singers, I’m always impressed by the strength of character, confidence and self-assuredness at a time and place when society seemed determined to crush…