The Blues Foundation sent out a message at the 35th annual Blues Music Awards in Memphis on Thursday, May 8th: The state of blues is strong. President and CEO Jay Sieleman announced at the awards ceremony that the Raise The Roof capital campaign to generate $2.6 million for The Blues Hall of Fame is a success and that construction of the building across the street from the Civil Right Museum will begin June 1st. The new facility will “pay tribute to the great blues men and women, giving them and their music the respect and validation they deserve.” His announcement was…
Author: Don Wilcock
Don Wilcock
Now into his second half century as the warrior music journalist, Don Wilcock began his career writing “Sounds from The World” in Vietnam, a weekly reader’s digest of pop music news for grunts in the field for the then largest official Army newspaper in the world, The Army Reporter. He’s edited BluesWax, FolkWax, The King Biscuit Times, Elmore Magazine, and also BluesPrint as founder of the Northeast Blues Society. Internationally, he’s written for The Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards program, Blues Matters and Blues World. He wrote the definitive Buddy Guy biography 'Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,' and is currently writing copy for a coffee table book of watercolor paintings of blues artists by Clint Herring.
People say to me today, “God, I wish I could have been there in the ’60s to see Hendrix live,” but note for note, the Experience Hendrix show is a better aural and visual experience.
“While I love Buddy (Guy) and B.B. (King), I can’t see them doing ‘I’m Not in Kansas Anymore,'” says Joe Louis Walker, “but I can do it and pull it off.” One of 12 songs on Hornet’s Nest, Walker’s second album for Alligator Records, “I’m Not in Kansas Anymore” sounds like The Who jamming with Cheap Trick. It’s sequenced right after “I’m Gonna Walk Outside,” a slide guitar tour de force that would fit right at home on Muddy Waters’ Real Folk Blues album from the early ’60s. And it’s followed by “Keep The Faith,” a gospel song in the…
Acoustic guitarist Tim Williams was half way from Calgary to Memphis in his journey to compete in the International Blues Challenge when the flight attendant in Houston made her first offer.
Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen Brothers film, focuses on a brief period in pop music history between the introduction of rock and roll and the British Invasion — based on a famous Greenwich Village personality
“I love you, daddy,” says Taj Mahal’s daughter, Deva Mahal. “I love you, baby,” he says back.
King Biscuit Blues Festival and The Core Culture
What is Bluzaplooza? Shemekia Copeland, Saddam’s Palace, incredible blues, and hurricanes… all in the name of paying our troops back for their incredible sacrifice.
Is there a Memphis sound? Brad Webb thinks so. He’s been totally immersed in the Memphis scene for more than 40 years. “I picked up the guitar of this guy from Atlanta I was doing sessions with and hit one lick, and that guy goes, ‘Oh, man, did you hear that?’ I was like, ‘Hear what?’ And it was me hitting a note, either bending a note or whatever. It was like that guy from Atlanta who was a horn player/keyboard player immediately picked up on the idea, ‘This guy plays different than we do.’ I mean I know we…
Malco Theater hosts the popular event with an all-star blues team at noon on Saturday, October 12, 2013