Henry's Blueshouse

One afternoon back in 1973, I took an unexpected telephone call. It was Victoria Spivey.  Considering that we had only previously been in contact by letter, and that had mostly…

One of the very few good things to come about during this Covid nightmare is the opportunity it affords to dig into the archives. With our usual work of booking…

Kansas City, Missouri stands at the crossroads where blues and jazz meet. From the wild and wide-open days of the mid 1920s, when Tom Pendergast steadfastly refused to let Prohibition…

Here’s a funiosity.   On the surface this Press Release from some 46 years ago appears to be about a routine like-for-like replacement for a musician suddenly taken sick mid-tour.…

Black Bottom was a predominantly black neighbourhood in Detroit, Michigan. A lot of folk wrongly believe that it got its name from the African-American community that developed there in the…

One Sunday morning, probably in 1984, there was a knock on my front door. I was surprised to find Chicago Blues hooligan Eddie C. Campbell, grinning as he always did,…

From the early 1900s, musicians from the nearby state of Mississippi made their way to Memphis, Tennessee, attracted by the bright lights of Beale Street. Among the more prominent arrivals…

Count Basie in Birmingham (photo by Jim Simpson) A lot of stone blues fans out there are probably unaware of just how blues-rooted the great Count Basie Orchestra was. That…

For a man known for taking every opportunity to cuss out his fellow musicians and anyone else who would pay heed – for the merest hint of profanity, an off-colour…

The Crown on Station Street, Birmingham, home of the original Henry’s Blueshouse in the late 60s and where it all began. Not long before the pub rang its final last…