Posts Tagged ‘Delta’

Big Joe Williams was a classic Mississippi Delta Bluesman. This gruff voiced, awkward fellow with his nine-string guitar had played in jug-bands and minstrel shows; he had wandered all over the South ‘riding the blinds’ as a hobo; played for tips on street-corners and juke-joints and then, when he moved to Chicago, wrote some songs that…

Robert Nighthawk was an important figure in the transitional development of Blues from its Mississippi roots to its new home in the city. His slide-guitar work, with its combination of rhythmic drive and subtle one-string runs, was learned in the Delta juke-joints but its effects were heard many years later in the clubs and bars…

The Dockery Plantation, just a few miles from Clarksdale Mississippi, was home to the giants of early Delta Blues. The folk music played by the country people there formed the origins of The Blues, and it spread out from that district all over The South, all over the country and all over the world. Tommy…

When Robert Johnson sang his seminal ‘Crossroads Blues’, in the last verse he tells how he is running away, but asks for ‘my friend Willie Brown’. That line immortalised Willie for future generations, but in truth he did enough in his own right to gain a page in Blues History, despite having recorded only three…

One of the few authentic Delta Blues players to bring the music into the present day, Honeyboy Edwards recorded a Grammy winning album in 2008 and was still performing almost until the day he died. Honeyboy reported that he was with his friend, the legendary Delta Bluesman Robert Johnson on the night he drank the…

When the Folk/Blues revival of the early 60’s brought old Blues players out of obscurity and put them on the world stage, nobody’s obscurity was deeper than Mississippi John Hurt’s. He had a superb fingerpicking style and a vast repertiore of songs, but John turned down the chance to join a travelling show when he…