blues

The Society for the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica is celebrating the instrument and those who love it.

On a recent reporting trip, Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd and Chris Bentley stopped in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town known as the birthplace of the blues. They speak with Mayor Orlando Paden, who runs the blues club Red's, and Shelley Ritter, executive director of the Delta Blues Museum. Then, music journalist Betto Arcos goes to Bentonia, Mississippi, to get a music and history lesson from a storied musician and owner of one of the region's remaining juke joints.

Ryan Coogler's period thriller knows "the devil's music" isn't the opposite of the holy word, but its twin.

The Grammy winner and former Late Show bandleader unravels the crisscrossing threads of musical lineage from Beethoven's own personal blues to the musical art form that undergirds Batiste's Louisiana roots.

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with the son of the co-founder of the legendary blues label Chess Records. Marshall Chess has released a new album, "The Chess Project."

A massive and closely held collection of blues music and research from the 1950s and 60s is seeing the light of day.

Shemekia Copeland just won the Critics Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album of 2022 by Living Blues magazine, as well as the magazine's female Blues Artist Of The Year.

NPR's Scott Detrow talks with Smithsonian curator John Troutman and blues musician Dom Flemons about the new folk music album, Playing for the Man at the Door.

Bessie Smith, also known as "Empress of the Blues," recorded her first record on Feb. 15, 1923: Down Hearted Blues.

Big Mama Thornton was a big name in R&B. She's one of the many Black musicians we credit for what we today call rock & roll.