The Chicago Blues Fest featured some incredible lineups in the 1980s. The tribute to Chess Records in 1986 probably ranks the highest, as...

Seeing up-and-coming Stevie Ray Vaughan for the very first time in February 1984 was like a surprise party. What songs would he play? He...

Try to think of a famous American inventor whose home and workplace are museums. Henry Ford? Yup. Thomas Edison? Of course. That pantheon...

You can’t tell the full story of modern blues and modern popular music without highlighting Willie Dixon, who passed away on this day 30...

“Play the song that got you here!” That’s what country music legend Roy Acuff recommended back in the day as he welcomed young performers...

“Where are you from?” The question came from a neighboring table at the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and it wasn’t...

Buddy Guy has mellowed, but in a way that is still pure Buddy Guy. By the time the 85-year-old legend departed the stage at Horseshoe...

Whether a start-up survives more than five years is essentially a coin toss, according to data from the US Small Business Administration....

The TL/DR version:21-year-old artist Christone "Kingfish" Ingram and his stellar supporting team serve up an irresistible blend of...

Stevie Ray Vaughan passed away 31 years today in a helicopter crash in southern Wisconsin. He left behind not only an immense musical...

Last Saturday, as we got ready to see Joanna Connor perform at Rosa’s on Chicago’s West Side, I couldn’t get an up-tempo version of...

One great thing about ticket stubs, posters, and invitations is their ability to help us piece together the past with some precision....

The sheer cultural intensity of the first six months of 1984 – a crossroads of the Boomer and Gen X eras – is hard to grasp to this day....