Lazy Lester got his break playing harmonica on a recording for Lightnin’ Slim. Producer JD Miller discovered that Lester could also sing and play guitar and drums. Those talents earned him recording ...

CD1: Slim Harpo: Blues Hang-Over; Butch Cage and Willie B. Thomas: Who Broke The Lock; Lightnin’ Slim: Bad Luck; Lightnin’ Slim: Bugger Bugger Boy; Schoolboy Cleve: Strange Letter Blues; Clarence ...

Nashville’s Excello Records had a blues pipeline to J.D. Miller’s studio in southwest Louisiana. From 1955 through 1965, Miller produced swamp blues records for Excello, and many of the label’s ...

Leslie Johnson, the architect of Louisiana swamp-blues who was better known as "Lazy Lester," died Wednesday afternoon at his home in Paradise, California. He was 85. In the 1950s and ’60s, Johnson ...

Two years ago, the Rolling Stones released “Blue & Lonesome,” a surprise album featuring the band’s spontaneously recorded interpretations of 12 blues classics. The project includes the Stones’ ...

Take away his drummer, his pickups, and his amp, and Mississippi-bred James “T-Model” Ford’s music could have sprung from the Depression era. Had the folks at Excello Records been made aware, during ...

Any musical genre gets its own regional twist, and this is especially the case with the blues. Just think of Chicago blues, Memphis blues and Detroit blues. However, a regional variant that has not ...