During the Roaring Twenties, Atlanta, Georgia, was home to a thriving community of bluesmen whose styles were as just distinctive as those of their counterparts in Texas and Mississippi, Memphis and Chicago. Peg Leg Howell and His Gang specialized in countrified juke music set to guitar and violin. Barbecue Bob, who became Columbia Records’ best-selling bluesman, framed his songs with zesty bass runs and rhythmic slide played on a 12-string guitar. His older brother Laughing Charley Lincoln was a less flashy 12-stringer whose dark personality belied the “laughing” shtick on …

Neil Woodward looks, sings, and plays like someone straight out of the 1870s. A natural-born storyteller, he’s culled a portion of his extensive repertoire from old books, sheet music, and the musical memories of people he’s encountered, but an equally important part of it comes from somewhere deep within. He expertly plays guitar, banjo, and fiddle, as well as autoharp, bass, bells, accordion, concertina, dulcimer, harmonica, mandocello, mandola, mandolin, pennywhistle, spoons, ukulele, and washboard. He sings with an appealing, wizened voice.
Woodward has performed everywhere from schoolhouses, pit orchestras, and concert stages …

Bessie Smith may have been the early blues’ greatest singer, but Ma Rainey was its greatest performer. This intense, warm woman was a living link between minstrelsy, the earliest blues, and vaudeville. Ma’s deep, almost-vibratoless contralto sounded rough and unsophisticated compared to other commercial blueswomen, but she projected a great depth of feeling and was adored by audiences.
Her Paramount 78s sold tremendously well, especially in the rural South, where she had long captivated the hearts of the rugged workers of fields, levee camps, and lumber yards with beautifully sung lyrics …

Caveat: Several of the century-old passages quoted in this article are racially offensive. The fact that these quotes use common parlance for the era in which they were published does little to diminish their ugliness. For the sake of historical accuracy, though, I’ve kept the quotes intact. My apologies to those offended.

Why cover Polk Miller at all? Because despite the racial overtones in his music and press, the man deserves credit for his pioneering efforts to integrate American music. I’m convinced that at his core Polk Miller was motivated by …

Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” the first recording of an African-American singing the blues, revolutionized pop music. Witnesses claimed that after its release in 1920, the song could be heard coming from the open windows of virtually any black neighborhood in America. “That record turned around the recording industry,” remembered New Orleans jazzman Danny Barker. “There was a great appeal amongst black people and whites who loved this blues business to buy records and buy phonographs. Every family had a phonograph in their house, specifically behind Mamie Smith’s first record.”
While …

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, …

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 …