News & Updates — blues

The Mother of the Blues, Gertrude Pridgett aka Ma Rainey, was an early singing star for that newfangled phonograph record player invention, as well as traveling and performing since the age of 12. She came from Georgia and heard the blues around 1902. She and her husband Will Rainey started groups called Alabama Fun Makers Company and then Assassinators of the Blues(!) and hit the road, also joining minstrel & medicine shows. She found herself in New Orleans in 1914 and started hanging with King Oliver, Louie Armstrong and Sidney Bechet. With her powerfully expressive vocals she cut her first...

Happy birthday to the great and influential bluesman Albert King, one of my all time favorites. I saw him play back in the '80s when I was a kid and it left a HUGE impression on me. A major guitar figure (who was a left-hander playing "backwards") and an excellent singer, he was born in the Mississippi Delta area. His first professional gigs were in Arkansas and he eventually moved North. Some of his earliest recordings were as a drummer for Jimmy Reed. He had limited success in the '50s in Chicago & St Louis but really found his fame...

Charles Mingus, along with Israel "Cachao" Lopez and William Parker, are my favorite bassists of all time. Add that Mingus is one of the greatest composers to ever walk the planet and his notoriously prickly personality and you have a genuine one-of-a-kind icon of insane genius. Deeply bluesy, gospel-inspired, funky and experimental, his music brought "jazz" to a whole 'nother level. As with Duke Ellington, he wrote compositions for specific players in mind, while engaging every member of the band. His music was also deeply politicized. Coming from Watts, he grew up poor but still learned the cello. He started...

The great jazz bass virtuoso Paul Chambers, forever immortalized by his old pal John Coltrane as "Mr PC", brought the instrument to a new level in his very short time on the planet. He was an early popularizer of the bowing technique and contributed greatly to harmonic advancement for the instrument. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Detroit, Chambers played brass instruments before switching to bass at 14. He quickly started playing classical music while still in high school, as well as jazz with Barry Harris before moving to NYC in the mid-'50s. He held a regular gig with Miles...

Sending a birthday shout-out to one of the fathers of British blues, Alexis Korner. He brought many artists to Britain to perform in the nightclubs from the '50s to the '70s. He also had slots on radio & TV to help bring American blues records and artists to the general public. But perhaps more importantly, he led bands that served as a school for young British blues-rockers. He played guitar, piano and mandolin with several ensembles from the '40s and formed Blues Incorporated in '61. Membership in that collective group included a who's-who of great British soon-to-be rockers (and jazzers),...