As the founder and blues-drenched harmonica master of the King Biscuit Blues Band for 20 years, Ken Schoppmeyer was known as a perfectionist. If a band member played a sour note, he’d sternly, and not ...

The blues world was changed forever on a sunny day around 1960 when a little boy walked into a five-and-dime in Los Angeles. ...

Blues harmonica master Carey Bell died on May 6 of heart failure in his hometown of Chicago. He was 70. Bell – the 1998 winner of the Blues Music Award for Traditional Male Artist Of The Year – was a ...

Among the harmonica’s many wonderful and unique traits, there is this: You have to really suck to be good at it. As one of America’s finest and busiest harmonica players, Denver’s Ronnie Shellist ...

Mississippi blues harp player James Cotton was certainly considered lucky for the break he got joining Muddy Waters’ band in the late 1950s, taking over a spot previously held by such venerated ...

The gift Miles Guzman got for his 13th birthday would outline the trajectory of the rest of his life. A simple $10 harmonica. Guzman, who grew up in Loveland, says he decided he wanted to be a blues ...

After writing his third symphonic piece for harmonica and orchestra, two words crowded the thoughts of bluesman Corky Siegel: Never again. The work of writing for a symphony was too tedious, too ...

I’m not an especially fervent advocate of blues harmonica, but I do love the greats—both the Sonny Boy Williamsons, Big Walter Horton, much of Charlie Musselwhite‘s innovative output. But for me no ...

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in ...

Blues harmonica virtuoso and onetime Muddy Waters sideman James Cotton died on Thursday at a medical center in Austin of pneumonia. He was 81. A rep for the musician confirmed his death. Cotton, who ...