2021 seems to be shaping up to be a good year for those of us who are interested in those…

It is surprising how many bluesmen have some sort of association with Dockery Plantation, a familiar name to many blues…

Considering the importance of the one man band in the Blues lexicon, it is remarkable how few of them ever…

Since the early 1920s Paris had become a bolt-hole for black American musicians. During the First World War black U.S.…

Listening to those self-assured early female blues singers, I’m always impressed by the strength of character, confidence and self-assuredness at…

The origins of Texas Blues go back to the early 1900s when a veritable army of the unemployed came to…

I was seventeen years old, as fed up with school as it was with me, impatiently awaiting my call-up to…

One afternoon back in 1973, I took an unexpected telephone call. It was Victoria Spivey.  Considering that we had only…

Kansas City, Missouri stands at the crossroads where blues and jazz meet. From the wild and wide-open days of the…

Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit, Michigan. A lot of folk wrongly believe that it got its…