Film of the four Kings of the electric blues guitar

BLUESMUSE18 Johann Graupner The world’s first public performance of African-American-influenced music most probably occurred at the Federal Street Theatre, Boston, in 1799, but not quite in the manner the time-worn myth or Wikipedia portrays.  According to popular legend, one of the era’s leading classical musicians, the German oboist, Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner, is said to…

Eight records Keith Richards would take to a Desert Island If we ever needed proof Keith Richards is now an English national treasure, just take a listen to the old Stone smokily cackling away on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs. Once the genteel preserve of crusty academics, senior politicians and other UK establishment figures, Desert Island Discs…

The minuscule YZ of blues. The final two letters of the AMERICA’S Gift index, plus some numbers.    A Ziegfeld girl   Why is AMERICA’S Gift’s YZ index so brief?  It goes to show just how few people, places and songs, in the blues lexicon, begin with Y or Z. Virginia Liston’s raunchy old blues song ‘You’ve Got The…

Updated 31 May 2016 Robert Johnson, immaculately-dressed, like all bluesmen back then Robert Johnson was the unluckiest of blues performers. As with other giant talents, ranging from Vincent Van Gogh and Franz Kafka to Galileo and Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Johnson became revered only after his death. That he’s known at all is probably due to the appreciation of Johnson’s…

I can’t claim to know him but I certainly remember briefly catching the irrepressible Iggy Stooge (as Iggy and The Stooges circa 1972. Iggy’s bottom right. he was known then) record a track for The Stooges’ now cult album, “Raw Power”, at the CBS Studios in London in late 1972. Iggy had just relocated from…