No one is going to mistake San Francisco for Chicago, St. Louis or Clarksdale, Mississippi, but the Bay Area has a proud and legitimate blues scene and annually puts on a show that will wow blues fans ...

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 ...

Mighty Fine Boogie (Ronnie Earl-- Guitar; Kim Wilson-- Harmonica; James Cotton-- Harmonica); Knocking At Your Door (John Primer-- Guitar, Vocals; Matthew Skoller ...

Mark Hummel didn’t set out to be an impresario. He had no burning ambition to corner the market on the world’s greatest blues harmonica players. But after getting a bracing shot of energy from ...

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 ...

Harmonica player Lawrence “Rockin’ Jake” Jacobs first found his calling on the radio dial. Struck by the pop and soul sounds coming over the air, Jake, as a kid in east Connecticut, stayed glued to ...

It’s been nearly 50 years since Chicago singer and harmonica player Billy Branch heard blues music for the first time as a 17-year-old student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Branch said it ...

My, my, how time does fly. Seems like it was just July and now August is slipping away in a sweat-slicked haze of heat, humidity and rain — and music. The musical doldrums didn’t seem to sap the life ...

UPDATE: Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blowout tour, which was supposed to launch in January, has been postponed. New dates have not been announced yet. See markhummel.com for more information. The ...

Austin, Texas, September 24-- Gary Primich, considered by many to be one of the greatest harmonica players in the world, passed away suddenly on September 23rd. Not only is this the loss of a ...

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