Learn About Blues Artists
Samantha Fish: The Fearless Guitar Force Redefining Modern Blues When Buddy Guy called a young guitarist up on stage during a 2013 show, he had no idea what was about to happen. Within minutes, the blues legend was grinning ear to ear, so electrified by her playing that he told his audience he would play […]
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Fantastic Negrito: Oakland’s Three-Time Grammy-Winning Blues Revolutionary In 1999, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz lay in a hospital bed in a coma, his right hand crushed beyond recognition. A near-fatal car accident had ended his music career — or so everyone assumed. Interscope Records called the hospital to inform him the label was dropping him. His guitars
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Peter Green: The Astonishing Genius Behind Fleetwood Mac B.B. King did not hand out compliments freely. So when he said Peter Green was the only guitarist who gave him the cold sweats, the blues world took notice. It was not empty praise. Green had a tone that could make a single note hang in the
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Pinetop Perkins: The Startling Truth of a Blues Piano Life In a Clarksdale, Mississippi juke joint sometime around 1943, a woman pulled a knife and slashed Pinetop Perkins across his left arm. The tendons severed cleanly. His guitar-playing days ended that night, and the trajectory of his musical career shifted permanently. However, what seemed like
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Luther Allison: The Bluesman Who Conquered Two Continents The crowd at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival numbered over 150,000. When Luther Allison tore into “Soul Fixin’ Man” from the main stage, the entire park locked in. His guitar screamed. His voice shook with gospel fire. He walked into the crowd with his Gibson Les Paul,
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Hubert Sumlin: The Guitar Behind Howlin’ Wolf’s Sound The boy was too young to be inside the juke joint. That didn’t stop him. Somewhere in the Arkansas Delta, a young Hubert Sumlin climbed onto wooden crates outside a roadhouse window. He pressed his face against the glass to watch the massive figure on stage. Howlin’
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Eric Gales: The Remarkable Prodigy Who Rose From Prison At fifteen years old, Eric Gales was cutting demos in a Memphis studio when Stevie Ray Vaughan walked in. The kid asked for an autograph. Vaughan said he would sign one — but only if Gales signed one for him first. That moment told the young
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In 1995, a 250-pound guitarist from the Bronx walked into a Miami studio to meet Tom Dowd. Dowd had made records for Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and the Allman Brothers Band. He did not suffer fools. But when Popa Chubby plugged in and hit the first chord, Dowd heard something real. The album they cut
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Larkin Poe almost didn’t happen. In December 2009, Rebecca and Megan Lovell watched their bluegrass trio — the Lovell Sisters — fall apart when oldest sister Jessica stepped away to get married and start college. The two younger Lovells had spent their teenage years winning mandolin contests at MerleFest and performing on A Prairie Home
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Mississippi John Hurt: The Remarkable Story of a Blues Genius In 1963, a young record collector named Tom Hoskins drove into Avalon, Mississippi. He brought nothing but a tape recorder, a guitar, and the words to a 35-year-old song. He pulled up to the town’s single gas station and asked about Mississippi John Hurt. The
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Howlin’ Wolf: Chicago’s Most Powerful Voice in Blues History Sam Phillips had heard plenty of talent by May 1951. However, nothing set him up for the sound that hit his Memphis studio when a 40-year-old farmer named Chester Arthur Burnett grabbed the mic. Phillips called it “the most different record I ever heard.” Furthermore, he
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Bessie Smith: The Empress Who Saved Columbia Records On February 15, 1923, a nervous young woman from Chattanooga walked into a makeshift Columbia Records studio in New York City. Every major label had already turned her down. However, when Bessie Smith opened her mouth and recorded “Downhearted Blues” that afternoon, the result was stunning. The
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B.B. King: The King of Blues Who Changed Guitar Forever On a cold night in 1949, a fight over a woman nearly killed the man who would become B.B. King. Two men brawling in a dance hall in Twist, Arkansas, knocked a barrel of burning kerosene across the wooden floor. The building caught fire within
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Ally Venable: The Texas Blues Guitarist Rewriting the Rules Ally Venable was twelve years old, riding in her father’s car in Kilgore, Texas. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” came through the speakers and changed her life. Within months, she had a guitar in her hands. Within a year, she had a band. By fourteen, she
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Buddy Guy: The Daring Fire That Ignited Chicago Blues Three days without food. No money. No contacts. No plan. Buddy Guy stood on a Chicago sidewalk in September 1957 with a Gibson guitar and the growing certainty that leaving Louisiana had been the worst decision of his life. He had mailed demo tapes to Chess
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Stevie Ray Vaughan: The Blazing Texas Blues Guitar Legend On a July evening in 1982, a skinny Texan named Stevie Ray Vaughan walked onto the stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a bolero jacket. He was unknown outside Austin. However, within minutes of tearing into Larry Davis’s “Texas Flood,” the
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Robert Johnson: The Delta Blues Legend Who Changed Music Forever Son House couldn’t explain it. The kid who used to grab his guitar at house parties in Robinsonville — the one House and Willie Brown would shoo away because he couldn’t play — had gone missing for the better part of a year. When Robert
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Muddy Waters: The Powerful Hidden New Voice of Chicago Blues In August 1941, a folklorist named Alan Lomax drove a government sedan down a dirt road to Stovall Plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi. He was looking for Robert Johnson. Johnson was dead — had been for three years. However, the plantation workers pointed Lomax toward
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T-Bone Walker: The Revolutionary Who Changed Electric Blues Introduction When T-Bone Walker plugged in his electric guitar in the late 1930s, he changed everything. Born Aaron Thibeaux Walker in Linden, Texas on May 28, 1910, he didn’t just play the blues—he reinvented what a guitar could do. While other musicians saw amplification as just a
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Big Bill Broonzy: Chicago’s Bridge Between the Cotton Fields and the Electric City In 1951, a fifty-something son of Arkansas sharecroppers walked onto the stage at London’s Kingsway Hall. He carried nothing but an acoustic guitar and three decades of blues in his hands. Big Bill Broonzy was about to change how the world heard
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Bukka White: An Authentic Raw Pioneer of the Delta Blues In 1963, a young guitarist named John Fahey wrote an address on an envelope that would reshape blues history. It read simply: “Bukka White (Old Blues Singer), c/o General Delivery, Aberdeen, Mississippi.” Fahey had no phone number, no street address, and no certainty that the
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Son House: The Delta Preacher Who Defined Raw Blues In May 1930, a Paramount Records producer traveled to Lula, Mississippi, looking for Charley Patton. He found Patton — and he found Son House. What he heard that day was a voice that sounded like it had been dragged out of the earth, paired with a
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