Blues & Roots

A Selfless Perspective on Blues History Jimmy Rogers looks like he enjoyed himself on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1994. By then, the great bluesman was 70, and nearly 25 years into the...

Joe Beard Rochester’s Mississippi Bluesman I first heard about the bluesman Joe Beard nearly 40 years ago, right around the time that Johnny Copeland was emerging as a too-good-to-be-true blues...

When segregationists urged whites to avoid listening to black music for fear of its irresistible appeal, they might have proffered Johnny Otis as Exhibit A of what they had in mind.  Early in his...

There’s a big new feature on Bonnie Raitt in the San Diego Union-Tribune in which she goes in-depth and mentions numerous influences, including the legendary Judy Roderick. I’ve...

Do you know the Hayden Carruth poem that consists exclusively of The Fantastic Names of Jazz?  It comes to mind as I run down the names of all the Chicago blues piano players who established...

When I first began listening to Chicago Blues, a handful of albums recorded in the mid-‘60’s made for essential listening.  They included Hoodoo Man Blues by Junior Wells;  The...

Here’s an extra helping of Junior Wells, this time in Portugal at the 1978 Algarve Jazz Festival.  The band includes Buddy Guy and Jimmy Johnson on guitars, Dave Myers on bass, and Odie Payne on drums. ...

As filmmakers go, I probably knew the name Les Blank before anyone else besides Alfred Hitchcock.  I would eventually become a devotee of Truffaut and Louis Malle and the American auteurs Scorsese...

While writing about Emerson earlier this week, I had occasion to include an excerpt of the interview I conducted with Harold Bloom in 2004.  Alas, there’s reason to excerpt even more of our conversation...

Louis Jordan’s birthday anniversary is this month.  The saxophonist and clarinet player was born in Brinkley, Arkansas on July 8, 1908 and died in Los Angeles on February 5, 1975.  After working with Chick...