Rooted in the Mississippi Delta, the blues sprang from spiritual music and field hollers, spinning a cultural thread that followed the Great Black Migration from South to North. Sheer joy of ...

“Sinners,” set in Mississippi in 1932—and the winner of four Oscars, including for best original score—has drawn fresh attention to early blues. A few years before then, Blind Lemon Jefferson became ...

With his acclaimed interpretations of Delta Blues standards, he was a fixture on the Greenwich Village music scene for decades. By Clay Risen John P. Hammond, a singer and guitarist whose virtuosic ...