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 ...

Fat, brassy sounds fill Cafe Van Kleef in downtown Oakland as Mark Hummel blows a slow Muddy Waters blues into his amplified B-flat Hohner harmonica. An off-white Dobbs shantung Panama hat rests on ...

“Classic Harmonica Blues,” out on May 21, features 20 tracks by the blues’ greatest harmonica players. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings In the early 20th-century, southern black ...

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 ...

Just when Vallejo blues musicians Raymond Victor and Steve Freund thought the week couldn”t get any worse. First, soul icon James Brown dies Christmas Day. Then Victor was told Dec. 26 that his ...

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 ...

He first rose to fame as a high-energy sideman for Muddy Waters during a 12-year stint into the '60s, having made his initial recordings for Sun Records in 1953 at age 15. "'Cotton Crop Blues' was the ...

Mississippi blues harp player James Cotton was certainly considered lucky for the break he got joining Muddy Waters’ band in the late 1950s, taking over a spot previously held by such venerated ...

For the past few months, the great Chicago blues harmonica player Sugar Blue has been on the run – from the coronavirus. His flight has taken him from Shanghai to Milan to the mountains of Italy to ...

Most nights, you can walk into a blues club and find a harmonica player blowing their heart out onstage. The wailing, honking sound associated with Western movies and juke joints is what many harp ...

Norman Davis has played thousands of blues songs on his radio shows. But for some reason, an old tune by the late Big Mama Thornton jumped out at him one day while he was hosting his syndicated blues ...