You’d be amazed just how many rock stars were teachers, as Carlos Wilde still is, and has been for years now. Queen’s Brian May taught math(s) and science; Mark Knopfler taught English, as did fellow Geordie, Sting.  Sheryl Crow and Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie were music teachers. Gene Simmons of Kiss taught sixth grade and Brian Ferry (another Geordie) taught art. And they’re just…

Top blues-inspired artwork, from a top blues-inspired artist. Since discovering a link between crude early blues lyrics and rude rugby songs, I’ve long championed the connection between old blues music and the rough-and-rumble game of rugby union. My book, America’s Gift, features a chapter on this connection. I also have two posts on dirty blues…

I’ve just come across an amazing discovery. Researching my new book, ‘150 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, I’ve found what I think just might be the very first prototype rock ‘n’ roll record. If you ignore the first nine seconds, that is. Composed by Charles ‘Cow Cow’ Davenport, it’s called “Cow Cow Blues” and sung…

‘Boogie Woogie Stomp’ bumped as America’s Gift’s earliest rock ‘n’ roll record. Below is a page from my blues history book, America’s Gift, showing the rocking blues I consider the six earliest prototype rock ‘n’ roll records. (The book features 20 in all.) I’d decided against putting Clarence ‘Pinetop’ Smith’s 1929 hit, ‘Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie’…