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Django Reinhardt (born Jean Reinhardt, January 23, 1910 – May 16, 1953) was a Belgian-born, Romani-French guitarist and composer who became one of jazz’s first[…]

Art Tatum (1909–1956) is widely regarded as one of the most astonishing pianists in jazz history—an improviser whose technique, harmonic imagination, and rhythmic command reset[…]

Art Blakey (1919–1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader—one of the defining architects of hard bop—whose group, the Jazz Messengers, doubled as a finishing[…]

Amos Milburn (1927–1980) was one of postwar America’s most exuberant blues and R&B pianists—a jump-blues hitmaker whose boogie-woogie drive, sly humor, and string of “drinking[…]

Robert Hicks (September 11, 1902 – October 21, 1931), known professionally as Barbecue Bob, was a defining voice of the Atlanta (Piedmont) country-blues scene. A[…]

Big Walter “Shakey” Horton, born Walter Horton, stands among the most expressive and technically gifted blues harmonica players of the twentieth century. Known for his[…]

Blind Willie Johnson (1897–1945) was a gospel-blues evangelist whose bottleneck slide guitar and thunderous, sermon-ready voice distilled sorrow, hope, and faith into recordings that still[…]

Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929) stands as one of the first country-blues superstars and a defining architect of the Texas blues sound. Emerging in the mid-1920s[…]

Sleepy John Estes (John Adam Estes) was one of country blues’ most expressive singer-songwriters, famed for a high, pleading vocal delivery and story-songs drawn from[…]

Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James (1902–1969) was a singular voice in American music—a Delta blues guitarist, pianist, and singer whose eerie falsetto, complex guitar figures, and[…]