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Henry Townsend lived a remarkably clean and productive life, and despite being around bootlegging, violence and tragedy for much of it, remained optimistic, open, moderate and funny to the very [...]

THE RHYTHM RATS Pretty Crowin' Chicken 5-String Productions 9061 This CD, issued by Marimac in 1994, has come back to life on 5-String Production's label. It is a mix of [...]

VARIOUS Classic African-American Ballads Smithsonian/Folkways 40191 Folklorist Barry Lee Pearson has once again raided the Folkways vaults, and emerged with a CD that gives us a glimpse into African-American Narrative [...]

COREY HARRIS Teaches Blues Guitar from Mississippi to Mali Homespun COR-GT21 (DVD) DEL REY Boogie Woogie Guitar Homespun DEL-GT21 (DVD) Here are two very different videos from Homespun, both by [...]

MAMIE SMITH Crazy Blues: The Best of Columbia/Legacy 65712 MISSISSIPPI SHEIKS Honey Babe Let the Deal Go Down: The Best of Columbia/Legacy 65709 LUCILLE BOGAN Shave 'Em Dry: The Best [...]

STEFAN GROSSMAN Country Blues Guitar in Open Tunings Grossman's Guitar Workshop 969 JOHN SEBASTIAN AND HAPPY TRAUM The Fingerpicking Blues of Mississippi John Hurt Homespun SEB-MJ21 What did we do [...]

Howard 'Louie Bluie' Armstrong passed away on July 30, 2003. He was 94. An exuberant fiddler and mandolinist, he was regarded as one of the last black string-band musicians. In [...]

Gospel Treasures 2001 In his book Woke Me Up this Morning, Alan Young talks about the hierarchical trappings of black Gospel quartets: titles, uniforms, responsibilities, within-group authority. This tendency toward [...]

Smithsonian/Folkways 40123 In the hagiography of the Folk Revival, Rev. Gary Davis's position is somewhere between Woody Guthrie and God. It is therefore great, thanks to a certain pack-rat mentality [...]

Wooden Teeth 003 Michael Pickett is about as steeped in dead-thumb Mississippi blues as one could be, coming from Canada. His playing is stark but not simplistic, his rack harp [...]

FURRY LEWIS Furry's Blues: The Complete Vintage Recordings (1927-1929) Document 5004 REVEREND BLIND GARY DAVIS Meet You at the Station: The Vintage Recordings (1935-1949) Document 5060 Document prides itself on [...]

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues By Elijah Wald Harper Collins (New York, NY), 2004, ISBN 0060524235, 368 pages, pbk., $24.95 First the disclaimer: not [...]

Swallow 6173 The Cajun music community is tight, family oriented, and as apt as any group in the world to have an infectious good time between the end of work [...]

WOODY MANN The Art of Acoustic Blues Guitar: The Basics Acoustic Sessions 101 WOODY MANN The Art of Acoustic Blues Guitar.' Fretboard Logic Acoustic Sessions 102 WOODY MANN The Art [...]

Blues guitarist David 'Honeyboy' Edwards, 96, died of congestive heart failure peacefully at home on the morning of August 29th, 2011. There is no one else still with us who [...]

THE 23 STRING BAND Catch 23 The 23 String Band There are actually 27 strings in this band from Louisville. I suspect they added the fiddle player, Scott Moore, a [...]

WATERMELON SLIM AND SUPER CHIKAN Okiesippi Blues Northernblues 0061 Okay, I'm prejudiced: If you can't get behind music like this, you've been drinkin' too much herbal tea. Slim and Super [...]

WATERMELON SLIM & THE WORKERS Live At the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi NorthernBlues 0060 On May 12, 2007, Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero flagship in Clarksdale, Mississippi had [...]

Discovering Folk Music By Stephanie P. Ledgin Praeger / ABC-CLIO (Santa Barbara, Calif.), 2010, ISBN 978-0-275-99387-0, 181 pages, hbk., $34.95 Stephanie Ledgin, noted photographer and lifelong folkie, has written a [...]

Jessie Mae Hemphill was born on October 18th, 1923, in Panola County, Mississippi. This is a place where African derived instruments played in African ways weave among blues, blues ballads, [...]

VARIOUS Blues Guitar Women Ruf 1110 Ottawa-born Sue Foley took it upon herself to assemble and celebrate Women In The Blues. She did so in time honored fashion, by lifting [...]

BIG GEORGE BROCK Club Caravan Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art 51590 BIG GEORGE BROCK Round Two Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art 1003 Well, it's a good [...]

THE HOOVER UPRIGHTS Known for Their Reputation 5-String Productions 05002 The Hoovers are John Schwab (guitar), Bill Schmidt (fiddle), David Rice (harmonica), Kate Brett (banjo and Kevin Enoch (banjo-uke, bass, [...]

CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind Music Maker 076 I put this CD in my car stereo, and it all but fried the machine. The tunes are more [...]

ORPHEUS SUPERTONES Bound to Have a Little Fun Mudthumper 0020 This is what I call a damn good CD: made for fun by some excellent players, cleanly executed and recorded, [...]

THE HODGES BROTHERS Bogue Chitto Flingding Arhoolie 9037 Arhoolie records' Chris Strachwitz ran into the Hodges Brothers in 1960 during his first southern swing for his then fledgling label, and [...]

ROY CARRIER AND THE NIGHT ROCKERS Living Legend Severn 00301 Never heard of this guy? Me neither. My loss and yours, as well. Talk about kickin' butt, this guy is [...]

VARIOUS Blues in the Mississippi Night Rounder 1860 This CD was made from an interview Alan Lomax conducted in 1946 with Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and John Lee 'Sonny [...]

JESSIE MAE HEMPHILL Get Right Blues Inside Sounds 0519 Jessie Mae Hemphill is a boogie-style, get-down jukester with a scintillating pedigree and several Handy awards. Due to a stroke in [...]

Arhoolie 9036 The term 'holy blues' is a contradiction. Though religious African Americans concede a relationship between the two broad genres, they keep the terms 'Holy' and 'blues' distinct. What, [...]

County 3528 It makes me proud when old friends get involved with projects of substance. Kerry Blech, who wrote the notes to this fine CD (with help from John Miller [...]

Telarc 83579 I'm jealous. 'Steady Rollin'' Bob Margolin is the most fortunate of blues revival players, having had steady employment and contact with all his blues heroes since his early [...]

WVUPress 4 Here is an all too rare example of a black musicologist, resident among the people he is studying, doing fieldwork among them. If ever there was a practicing [...]

Bluesette 300 The reason Mary Flower has been able to make a living playing the music she loves is that she is the very essence of taste. In the words [...]

Electro-Fi 3380 On 55 North, about halfway between Memphis and St. Louis, is the Trail of Tears State Park exit, marked by a sign that says 'Fruitland, Jackson.' This is [...]

Deep Sea 8002 If you were an alien exploring our galaxy for the first time, you'd encounter humans first as a faint signal from the spacecraft Voyager, launched in 1977 [...]

Jasmine 3011 The guitar Big Bill plays on these two CDs is the 000-28 given to him by Win Stracke, founder of the Old Town School of Folk Music. When [...]

Kenny Hall This two-CD set documents one week in the sixty-five year career of California's treasured mandolin and fiddle player Kenny Hall. At eighty, this sightless San Jose native almost [...]