R.L. Burnside’s ‘First Recordings’ was the result of a neighbor’s recommendation: “I know who that be.”

In the end, too-soon-gone Louisiana bluesman John Campbell boasted a short, stormy, and now storied career.

NICK DERISO: One of Shirley Brown’s early hits was called “Love is Built on a Strong Foundation,” produced by Oliver Sain for the Abet label. Same with her career. Born in West Memphis, Ark., Brown started like so many great sizzling soul singers do – in church. Not until herRead More

NICK DERISO: Recorded live at Montreal’s Rising Sun Club in January 1977, and later reissued by Just a Memory Records in ’99, “Hoochie Coochie Man” stands as one of the last testaments to the Gospel of Muddy. He was the bridge between country and city cool, an urban griot withRead More

They are, these odds and ends, the last great treasure left by one Sam Maghett — better known as Magic Sam. This god of the tremolo embodied (just as fully, but with far less fanfare) the same gritty and adventurous West Side Chicago swagger more commonly associated with Buddy GuyRead More

NICK DERISO: Cephas and Wiggins, America’s best remaining champions of the easterly Piedmont blues tradition, somehow never really made it. I mean, Robert Cray-type made it. Stevie Ray-type made it. A shame. Self-taught harp player Phil Wiggins, from Washington D.C., met John Cephas as the 1960s blues revival was inRead More

The Quickies columns have been settling into a theme of late, a theme of pimping obscure jazzers, especially whack jazzers. Hey, I can do nothing but that for years on end, but then I’d be skipping over some albums worthy of salute that come the more mainstream side of music.Read More

Ten years ago, Hanson caused a stir in the pop world by delivering catchy tunes that were self-performed and largely self-penned, by siblings who were still just kids. Today, the blues has its own version of Hanson, and the name of this family affair is The Homemade Jamz Blues Band.Read More

NICK DERISO: You’ll the find the best of this underappreciated, high-style Mississippi blues pianist on 1950s-era Trumpet Records reissues put out beginning in 1989 by Chicago’s Alligator Records. Run out of a Jackson, Miss., record store, Lillian Shedd McMurry’s locally legendary Trumpet label caught several blues greats just before theirRead More

Scrapomatic’s third album ‘Sidewalk Caesars’ once again brought the spirit to mid-20th century folk blues to the early 21st century.