News & Updates — Video

Sam Maghett aka Magic Sam! Not just the best barbecue on Chicago's West Side, but also one of my very favorite blues guitar players and singers! From his first record "All Your Love" (as Good Rockin' Sam, for the Cobra label) in 1957 until his early death in 1969 (just 32!), his rockin' sound and pleading voice was a staple on the blues circuit. Born in the Mississippi Delta into a family of sharecroppers, he built his own cigar-box guitars as a kid and when the family moved to Chicago in 1950 he had his eyes on the prize and...

The should've-been-better-known out-jazz tenor player (and bass clarinetist) Glenn Spearman brought a powerful lyricism and fierce beauty to great records by Cecil Taylor, Emergency (a group he co-founded in Paris with Bob Reid), Raphe Malik, Marco Eneidi, Trio Hurricane, John Heward and William Hooker. He also worked with Rova Saxophone Quartet and his own groups, such as G-Force and his classic Interstellar Space-inspired duo album Night After Night with Don Robinson. He was a major part of the Bay Area avant-garde & out-jazz scenes beginning in the late '60s and was on staff at Mills College. I have seem him...

Passing just two months after Charlie Parker was another genius of the saxophone, tenor player Wardell Gray. He was one of the bright lights of the West Coast scene of the late '40s/early '50s and it's a shame how relatively little-known he is compared to some of the other titans of the era, of which he surely should rank alongside. His style was flowing and melodic, not too heavy. He was one of the players who straddled the line between the swing and bop eras. His first instrument was clarinet but he was inspired upon hearing Lester Young to switch to...

The activist singer Josh White got his start as a homeless teenager, recording his own blues and gospel sides, and cutting sessions for other singers before a period of inactivity due to a serious hand injury. Healed, he starred on Broadway, became FDR's closest friend and was a well-loved country-blues artist in the '40s. One of the most popular artists of the day, he also made some movie appearances at a time when blacks were rarely seen starring onscreen. In fact, White's career was full of "firsts" for black artists...until McCarthyism damaged his reputation with the American public and he...

The pioneering rockabilly artist Gene Vincent whooped things up with the mighty "Be-Bop-A-Lula" in 1956 with his band The Blue-Caps, which was originally intended as a b-side. Other '50s hits included "Race With The Devil", "Bluejean Bop" and "Lotta Lovin". He became an ex-pat in '59 and lived in and toured Europe for several years, at one point his band included a young Ritchie Blackmore. Beset by medical problems from injuries sustained in two road crashes (a '55 crash of his brand new Triumph motorcycle and a '60 taxi crash that killed Eddie Cochran), and his subsequent self-destruction through drink...