Blues & Roots

A Chicago Bluesman in Roxbury With Worcester’s Babe Pino and Brookline’s Bob Margolin During a visit to Boston last weekend, I drove to Dudley Square in Roxbury to catch a glimpse of the...

I’m on my way to sing traditional carols and wish “Merry Christmas” and “Feliz Navidad” to my fellow Holyoke parishioners, but wanted to leave you with a few Christmas goodies that I found under the YouTube...

From His Head to His Heart to His Hands The blues-rock icon Michael Bloomfield is the subject of a new 3-CD retrospective produced and “curated” by Al Kooper for Columbia/Legacy.  From His Head...

In the radio documentary, “Let the Good Times Roll,” Mickey Baker told producer Lex Gillespie that “[If it wasn’t] for the blues, we’d all be sitting around sipping tea and listening to chamber music.” ...

The blues-rock icon Michael Bloomfield is the subject of a new 3-CD retrospective produced and “curated” by Al Kooper for Columbia/Legacy.  From His Head to His Heart to His Hands includes a...

There’s an aspect of Muddy Waters’ birthday that reminds me of Louis Armstrong.  In the 1980s, documents surfaced that disproved Armstrong’s claim of a birth date of July 4, 1900.  As his baptismal...

It took a “country boy” who “stayed out all night long” to create the modern Chicago blues. With his 1948 Aristocrat release, “I Can’t Be Satisfied” b/w “I...

I’ve never been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras proper, but my wife and I were in the Crescent City a few years ago on the Feast of the Epiphany, better known as Twelth Night, the traditional start of the...

I was trolling the internet waters last weekend for new Paul Butterfield material, and as happens on YouTube, one catch leads to another.  Butterfield was one of the all-star guests of B.B. King on a special...

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at Monterey Pop (l-r) Mark Naftalin, Gene Dinwiddie, Elvin Bishop, Keith Johnson, Paul Butterfield One of the most widely-circulated films of Paul Butterfield in action...