UPDATED September 7, 2021. BLUESMUSE29. Until the 1890s, when mail order catalogues made them more affordable and improved roads and rail links made musical instruments more accessible, guitars were mainly a preserve of the American middle classes. Most were much smaller than the guitars we know today, probably because they were mostly played by women. Perhaps that’s why they…

BLUESMUSE28.  How many blues lovers have wondered how this intriguing music of ours first gained its unique sound? As much as I tried, I could never see how the nuances of blues related to the frenetic music of old tribal Africa, no matter how many documentaries and music histories told me it did. About ten years ago,…

Updated 3 April 2017. BluesMuse27 Long ago, when I played rugby, there was an old guy we nicknamed Daddy Stovepipe. Daddy was a human dynamo, still turning out for the seconds or thirds every week and tackling, ferociously, anything that moved in shorts. Daddy did this well into his late 50s before arthritis cut short his career and confined…

MORE PICS THAN YOU CAN POKE A STICK AT Hot on the heels of HOW BLUES EVOLVED Volume One comes HOW BLUES EVOLVED Volume Two, finished in bordello red so you can distinguish between the two. Like Vol 1, packed with photographs. Packed with photographs, just like Volume One, HOW BLUES EVOLVED Volume Two takes…

BLUESMUSE26. Just like Eddie. There are two answers, really, because the first recording of an electric blues guitar was for demonstration purposes only. It was during the days when Rickenbacker was testing out the first electric guitar which guitar geeks (sorry, aficionados) will know was nicknamed the frying pan. In 1932, a 28-year old white band leader and Hawaiian guitarist…