News & Updates — blues

One of my favorite musicians was John Lee Hooker and his deeply entrancing boogie, a droning one-chord style that is one of the more direct links from American electric blues to an ancient African sound pool. From the Mississippi Delta, his exact birth year is disputed. His earliest musical experience was with spirituals before learning to play the blues from his step-father. He left home at 14 and by the '30s was playing on Memphis' Beale Street. In 1943, after a few years in Cincinnati, he started working at the Ford Motors plant in Detroit while playing local clubs. Around this...

The unsung Jimmy Norman displayed his creativity in many different places during a long career largely underknown to the general public. He was perhaps most identifiable as a lyricist and songwriter, working with Bob Marley, Eddie Palmieri, Johnny Nash, Irma Thomas, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Tosh, Shorty Rogers and others. Born in Nashville, he grew up on the West Coast and started singing and recording with local doo-wop group The Chargers, including Jesse Belvin's "Dandilyon". (It was Belvin who spotted them and recommended them to RCA Victor. He did a bunch of touring as a musician in the '50s and wrote...

One of my heroes, Rahsaan Roland Kirk brought a playful humor and inspired work ethic to some serious blues & bop chops. A man who could play THREE saxophones at the same time with a nose flute and bells around his ankles, but could really play a solo with the best. It is no secret that he was one of Jimi Hendrix's all time favorites: in fact as Jimi was blowing up big, he was found playing in Kirk's group one never-recorded weekend at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. (Hendrix said that Kirk told him to turn his volume UP). From...

Yet another great born on this day include the amazing vocalist/activist/songwriter/actress Abbey Lincoln. Her long career included tender ballads, fierce firespeak, protest music, screen acting and she was an inspiring presence on the scene for civil rights, creative music and powerful vocals. From rural Michigan, the early '50s found her singing professionally in Los Angeles and Honolulu. She made her first record in '55 and one with Benny Carter the next year. A string of classics with Riverside and Candid came after, including Abbey Is Blue and Straight Ahead. Starting in 1959 she worked with (and eventually married) Max Roach....

Happy birthday to one of my very favorite bluesmen, David "Junior" Kimbrough. He wasn't recorded too much in his early days, toiling for decades playing his "cottonpatch blues" at his roadside shack venue in Holly Springs, MS. He cut his first recordings in Memphis in '66 but they lay unreleased until long after Kimbrough's death. His first actual release (erroneously "Junior Kimbell") was his version of "Tramp", a 45 cut for the Philwood label in '67. In '69 he cut duets with rockabilly artist Charlie Feathers. He recorded scantly in the '70s and '80s but made his NYC debut at...