Blues

It's nineteen fifty-something, in a dark, cramped, smoke-filled room. Everyone's wearing black. And on-stage a tenor is blowing his heart out, a searching, jagged saxophone journey …

'You the funkiest man alive.' Miles Davis' accolade was the perfect expression of John Lee Hooker's apotheosis as blues superstar: recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith …

"Billie Holiday deserves a biography in which her musicianship isn't overshadowed by the tragic events of her life. O'Meally has written that book," says Entertainment Weekly …

'Ghost notes' is a musical term for sounds barely audible, a wisp lingering around the beat, yet somehow driving the groove. The Texas musicians profiled here, ranging from 1920s …

Robert Johnson is the subject of the most famous myth about the blues: he allegedly sold his soul at the crossroads in exchange for his incredible talent, and this deal led to his …

"Both as a person and as a musician, he was number one in my book." —Benny CarterBassist George Duvivier (1920-1985) was one of the most universally respected musicians in jazz. …

Melbourne, 1971: radical counterculture, hippies, opposition to the Vietnam War and consumerism. The birth of Oz blues rock. Influenced by American blues after Robert Johnson, …

All too often an incident or accident, such as the eruption in Crown Heights with its legacy of bitterness and recrimination, thrusts Black-Jewish relations into the news. A volley …

`The best one-volume history of jazz.' That is how the American Music Guide described the book that Louis Armstrong once said `held ol' Satch spellbound'. A unique blend of history …

Traditional jazz studies have tended to see jazz in purely musical terms, as a series of changes in rhythm, tonality, and harmony, or as a parade of great players. But jazz has …