Blues & Roots
The Rock Hall of Fame Recognizes a Groundbreaking Band
The Butterfield Blues Band, East-West, 1966
Today is Paul Butterfield’s 72nd birthday anniversary. Yesterday it was announced that the Paul Butterfield...
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is being inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame tonight in Cleveland. The Hall is 30 years old, which makes the Butterfield induction about 30 years overdue, but as...
Phenomena at Newport: the White Blues Hero and the Folk Rock Anti-Hero
July 25th marked the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. The milestone is being widely commemorated,...
Paul Butterfield in Woodstock, 1976
Paul Butterfield, who died 30 years ago, was born on December 17, 1942. Most of us who had any connection with Butterfield back then were more saddened than surprised...
Paul Butterfield, 1977; photo by Catherine Sebastian/CSP Images
Martin Scorsese captured something of Paul Butterfield’s singular stature in the way he framed the harmonica player’s appearance in The...
A Conversation With the Author of a Ground-Breaking Work on a Neglected Period of Music History
I spoke this week with Preston Lauterbach, author of The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to...
My passion for New Orleans music ramped up to infatuation on July 3, 1973, when I heard Professor Longhair for the first time in Central Park. The experience still stands as the single greatest unanticipated...
John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson
It doesn’t require more than a casual knowledge of blues to know that there were two prominent figures in the music named Sonny Boy Williamson. On his new...
Before it slides deep into the archives of NEPR News, here’s the commentary I voiced in memory of B.B. King on May 21.
B.B. King at the Club Ebony, Indianola, MS, 1980
I’d never noticed until I heard the All Things Considered report on Wednesday that two recordings I’ve listened to for years, Robert Johnson’s “Kind-Hearted Woman” and Pablo Casals’ performance of Bach’s...