John Long

John Long possesses an extraordinary knack for evoking the sound of prewar country blues artists, whether performing originals he created solo or alongside his elder sibling Claude Long. This approach lends his work the aura of treasured 1920s and early-1930s blues 78s, yet it also registers as strikingly contemporary, given how rarely anyone revives such vintage styles with equivalent attention and accuracy. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1950, Long absorbed his mother’s jazz and R&B 78s during childhood, absorbing the durable, crackling character of those discs straight into his musical makeup. Well before reaching his teens, he was already experimenting with country blues guitar techniques. Teaming with Claude, who likewise handled guitar, he launched the Mystics in the early 1960s to tackle then-current rock & roll and R&B numbers, though both siblings found themselves pulled ever deeper toward earlier blues forms; Long soon recognized that the prewar acoustic blues period represented his true artistic foundation. Relocating to Chicago in the early 1970s, he received guidance from Homesick James Williamson while performing on local stages. After witnessing one such appearance, Muddy Waters declared Long “the best young country blues artist playing today.” Apart from scattered session contributions and privately made demo recordings—among them the independently issued cassette album Long on Blues in 1999—Long produced no further documented material for years. Eventually a demo reached Randy Chortkoff, founder of Delta Groove Records, who responded to the commanding force of Long’s interpretations of classic country blues and offered him a contract. The resulting full-length release, Lost & Found, emerged on Delta Groove in 2006. Another ten years passed before Long completed his follow-up, Stand Your Ground, issued by the same label in 2016.