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…

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…

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…

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…

April 30th would have been the 100 and somethingth birthday of the legendary Homesick James. Jim shares his reminisences of the colourful character: Every time that I look back on…

The origins of Texas Blues go back to the early 1900s when a veritable army of the unemployed came to the state to work in the oilfields, ranches and lumber…

Producer of American Blues Legends ’73 Jim Simpson talks us through the stories and characters behind the Big Bear Records cult classic album, featuring Lightnin’ Slim, Homesick James, Snooky Pryor,…

Charles was born in Texas City, Texas, in 1922 and first came to notice as pianist and singer with Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers where his ‘Drifting Blues’ stayed on the…

I was seventeen years old, as fed up with school as it was with me, impatiently awaiting my call-up to National Service in the RAF and increasingly curious about what…

I’m not the only music fan who developed a fascination for certain record labels. Not the majors, of course, they can look after themselves, but it’s a special feeling to…