Posts about blues music

Julia Lee (1902/1903–1958) was a Kansas City pianist-singer who brought jump-blues swagger, jazz phrasing, and a famously sly sense of humor to American popular music.[…]

Josh White (1914–1969) was a pathbreaking blues and folk singer-guitarist whose supple tenor voice, crisp Piedmont-style guitar runs, and fearless topical repertoire helped move Black[…]

Johnny Shines (born John Ned Shines, April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was a towering voice of Delta and Chicago blues whose career traced[…]

Johnny Hartman (1923–1983) was an American baritone whose velvety tone and unerring diction made him one of the most cherished interpreters of romantic ballads in[…]

John Mayall (November 29, 1933 – July 22, 2024) was an English blues bandleader, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and tireless catalyst behind the 1960s British blues boom.[…]

J. J. Johnson was the pivotal modern trombonist who proved that the slide trombone could speak bebop’s fast, harmonically intricate language as fluently as saxophones[…]

Jimmy Rogers (born James A. Lane; June 3, 1924 – December 19, 1997) was one of the architects of post-war Chicago blues. As Muddy Waters’s[…]

Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller (March 12, 1896 – January 29, 1976) was a Georgia-born, Bay Area–based one-man band whose blend of country blues, folk, ragtime,[…]

Jimmy Reed (born Mathis James Reed) was one of the most influential and widely popular blues artists of the post-World War II era. With a[…]

James Henry Cotton (1935–2017) was one of the most electrifying harmonica players in modern blues—an unmistakable live force whose gale-strength tone and showmanship carried Delta[…]