As the founder and blues-drenched harmonica master of the King Biscuit Blues Band for 20 years, Ken Schoppmeyer was known as a perfectionist. If a band member played a sour note, he’d sternly, and not ...

Hear Brandon Bailey perform two songs live in the NPR studio. The harmonica is a staple of American blues, beginning with the Memphis jug bands of the 1920s. In the 1960s, blues-influenced artists ...

Brody Buster performs as a one-man band before a Royals game at Kauffman Stadium in June. It's been twenty years since Brody Buster's first round of glory days — when he was a 10-year-old blues ...

If you ask James Montgomery if he remembers playing the Shaboo inn in Willimantic back in the day — the legendary local club that closed in 1982 — he’ll hem and haw and scratch his head and say “The ...

In the mid-1800s, a German harmonica manufacturer named Hohner started exporting his product to North America. Being relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to play and extremely portable, the ...

One of the major transitions in the blues took place after thousands of Mississippians moved to Chicago, and drew upon the acoustic sounds of the Delta to create electrified Chicago blues. One of the ...

Harmonica Shah has been a fixture on the Detroit blues circuit for at least 20 years and has been featured on a number of recordings with other local blues artists such as Hastings Street Grease. Shaw ...

To broach his uncertain future, Johnny Sansone first had to relinquish his familiar past. Photo by Timothy WhiteJohnny Sansone's new CD is an early contender for one of the best local albums of the ...

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, ... Telarc Blues culls their considerable holdings to provide a wholly satisfying collection of contemporary blues harmonica by contemporary and ...

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 ...

At a young age, the soul of the blues grabbed Eric VonHerzen by the collar and shoved itself into his pocket. In Orange County during the early ‘70s, there probably weren’t too many kids who needed it ...

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 ...