Phillips released two singles from Cotton, “Straighten Up Baby” in 1953 and “Cotton Crop Blues” the following year. Cotton was still a teenager working as a regular on the Memphis music scene when ...

Among the harmonica’s many wonderful and unique traits, there is this: You have to really suck to be good at it. As one of America’s finest and busiest harmonica players, Denver’s Ronnie Shellist ...

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in ...

Blues harmonica virtuoso and onetime Muddy Waters sideman James Cotton died on Thursday at a medical center in Austin of pneumonia. He was 81. A rep for the musician confirmed his death. Cotton, who ...

PORT ARTHUR, Texas — A Port Arthur blues harmonica player who toured the world and played with many jazz and blues greats has died. Paul Orta, 61, died at home in Port Arthur at 9:30 p.m. with his ...

ASPEN ” John Popper has two theories about how the harmonica became his instrument of choice. The first: the harmonica was easy to play. This theory holds water. The way the harmonica’s reeds are ...

No one know when the harmonica first got the blues, but WC Handy reported hearing train imitations being played on the instrument in the 1870s, and by the 1920s, after Mamie Smith hit with Crazy Blues ...

Tony Glover, a harmonica player who as a member of the group Koerner, Ray and Glover was at the center of the folk music revival of the 1960s and helped introduce a new audience to the blues, died on ...

Mark Hummel didn’t set out to be an impresario. He had no burning ambition to corner the market on the world’s greatest blues harmonica players. But after getting a bracing shot of energy from ...

You can be sure that folks on the historic downtown hotel’s patio were standing throughout the concert. Hummel expects the same when he and Funderburgh return for the 12th annual KXCI House Rockin’ ...

The harmonica just might be the Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments, at least in the classical music world. It just doesn’t get any respect. But contrary to what you might think, it has some ...

Months after his aphasia diagnosis, Bruce Willis found good company in a harmonica and musician Derek Richard Thomas. On Monday, wife Emma Heming Willis shared an Instagram video of the “Die Hard” ...