How did fanciful European parlor music influence the creation of the blues? In a more profound way than most fans realize. What follows is one of the most fascinating and least understood chapters in blues history.  special thanks is owed to the Kansas Historical Society and its online archive, kansasmemory.org, for making available some of the material that informs this article.
In times before radio, records, and electric lights, people often played music to amuse themselves after dinner and at social gatherings. “Parlor guitar,” a favorite European musical fare during the late 1700s, …

With Keith Richards’ nod, I was hired to put together a one-shot magazine, Inside the Voodoo Lounge, to be sold at venues and newsstands during the Rolling Stones’ 1994-1995 World Tour. The first part of my assignment was to fly to Toronto, where the Stones had taken over a boys’ prep school for their rehearsals, and interview each member of the band. I was thrilled to be talking to Charlie Watts, a favorite drummer ever since “Satisfaction” and “Get Off Of My Cloud” hit the airwaves.
My first glimpse of Charlie …

Sometimes the most memorable interviews happen unexpectedly. Researching Blind Willie Johnson, the sublime prewar gospel-blues slide guitarist from Texas, I was struck by how magnificently Ry Cooder had used Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night – Cold Was the Ground” in his Paris, Texas soundtrack. I sent Cooder a note asking if he’d give me a quote. A few days later, on February 25, 1990, the phone rang and it was the man himself. After talking about Blind Willie Johnson, Ry suddenly moved on to another Johnson – Robert – …

James Honeyman-Scott lived long enough to play on just three major releases with the group he co-founded – 1980’s The Pretenders, the Extended Play EP, and 1981’s Pretenders II – but he still holds his place among new wave’s most original guitarists.
In a 1999 Uncut interview, Chrissie Hynde called him her “musical right hand.” “He really was the Pretenders sound,” she explained. “I don’t sound like that. When I met him, I was this not-very-melodic punky angry guitar player and singer, and Jimmy was the melodic one. He brought out …

During the mid 1920s, strong sales of 78s by Papa Charlie Jackson and Blind Lemon Jefferson led Paramount Records to sign Blind Blake, a swinging, sophisticated guitarist whose warm, relaxed voice was a far cry from harsh country blues. Some of Blake’s 78s cast him as a jivey hipster sitting in with jazzmen, while on others he walked the long, lonely road to the gallows. The man with the “famous piano-sounding guitar” is still regarded as the unrivaled master of ragtime blues fingerpicking.
“Lord have mercy, was he sophisticated!” says Jorma …

Today, most music fans have never heard of George W. Johnson. Asked to name the first black singing star, even knowledgeable collectors will typically cite Bert Williams, the 1910s Broadway star, or Mamie Smith, the diva who kicked off the 1920s blues craze with “Crazy Blues.” But Johnson was making and selling tens of thousands of records – cylinders, mostly – three decades before Miss Smith conjured her magic, making him the direct forerunner of Bert Williams, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, and other performers who’ve come to be …

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Nick Lucas, America’s first guitar star.
During the Roaring Twenties, Nick made stacks of 78s, including 1922’s “Pickin’ the Guitar” and “Teasin’ the Frets,” the first notable guitar solos on record. Framing his warm, pure tenor with agile guitar parts, he scored his first major hit with 1924’s “My Best Girl”/“Dreamer of Dreams.” Nick won rave reviews on Broadway, played for royalty in Europe, and co-starred in the 1929 Technicolor film Gold Diggers of Broadway. Then he had the biggest …

Asked to name my favorite among all the musicians I’ve interviewed, the first person who comes to mind is John Lee Hooker. John could not read or write, and could barely scrawl his own name, but he was highly intelligent, profoundly insightful, and musically true to himself.
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I first saw John Lee Hooker in 1966, playing a solo set at the Detroit-based Jesuit high school I’d just begun attending. That night he did most of the set from a fabulous album he’d just made with Muddy Waters’ band, Live At The …