News & Updates — blues

Happy birthday to weirdo filmmaker, bohemian, anthropologist and folk song archivist Harry Everett Smith! Where would we be without his awesome Anthology of American Folk Music, taken from his personal 78s collection and allowing the world to hear long-forgotten and buried blues, gospel, hillbilly and various folk musics. Folkways released and marketed this set of records in 1952, well ahead of the Folk & Blues Revival, and many would-be stars cherished these recordings and many of them covering the songs contained. Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and many others counted this glorious set as a major influence.

Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was one of the men who brought the electric guitar to the forefront. He played guitar with his teeth during his act and inspired so many (Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, the 3 Kings --BB, Freddy, Albert, Gatemouth Brown, the Allman Bros). He was one of the original "modern blues" artists, electrifying the rural blues and making it more sophisticated with jazz, jump and swing. He also is considered one of the founders of rock & roll. The Afro-Cherokee blues guitarist got his career going in the '20s around Dallas working for Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Christian...

A smoothed-voice blues singer with a ton of soul, Little Junior Parker was also a deft harmonica-player, tutored by Sonny Boy Williamson. From that fertile blues bastion of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Parker sang gospel as a kid and went on to play with Howlin' Wolf in the late '40s. He was part of Memphis' infamous "Beale Streeters" (with BB King & Bobby "Blue" Bland) before starting his own band, The Blue Flames, in '51 with legendary guitarist Pat Hare. Ike Turner took him to the Modern label (with Ike on piano) but it was with Sun that he broke out. His...

Happy birthday to that bitter bastard genius, the incomparable Miles Davis!! From bebop to cool jazz to modal to out-funk/fusion to pop, Miles played it all and never cared what the critics thought of him! My personal favorite era was his '70s hard-avant-funk, some of which sounds so brutal that it borders on proto-death metal!

On February 14, 1920, Mamie Smith recorded two songs for Okeh Records and history was made as she was the first black blues singer to make an appearance on record. The label was threatened with a boycott if they recorded a black singer but they did so anyway and the Smith-Okeh partnership went on to sell MILLIONS of records, bringing a huge jump in sales to what was called at the time "race records". She came from the Midwest and started touring at 10 with a vaudeville act before moving to NYC in 1913. She became a big star of...