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Genre guide

The blues.
Where almost everything began.

The blues was born in the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, drawing on African musical traditions, work songs, and spirituals to give voice to hardship, longing, and resilience. Built on a deceptively simple structure of twelve bars and bent, expressive notes, it became the foundation beneath jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and nearly all of modern popular music. From the Mississippi Delta to the electric clubs of Chicago, the blues turned personal sorrow into a shared and lasting language.

Browse featured Blues artists

From the genre's founders to the names still being discovered.

Blues articles
3 days ago
Albert King and B.B. King Played the Same Rooms With Completely Different Hands
B.B. King and Albert King were born two years apart in the Mississippi Delta, shared a borrowed surname, and built the two most influential and opposite guitar techniques in blues history. The story of their parallel careers, Albert's landmark 1967 Stax album "Born Under a Bad Sign," and the rock world they jointly unlocked is the real architecture of the electric blues.
2 weeks ago
Buddy Guy Bet on a Twenty-Year-Old from Clarksdale and Won
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram's 2019 debut album, produced by Tom Hambridge at Ocean Way Studios with Buddy Guy guesting on "Fresh Out" and Keb' Mo' playing across six tracks, was the blues canon making a formal introduction in real time. A twenty-year-old from Clarksdale, ninety-one weeks at number one on the Billboard Blues Chart, and a generation that had never heard it.
Jun 9, 2026
The Single Song That Connects Son House, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters
Son House was the direct teacher of both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and the same song passed through all three men's hands across two decades. The story of how House vanished to Rochester while his students became legends is the real root of the blues canon.
May 24, 2026
The Black Keys Made a Record for Themselves — and That's Exactly the Point
The Black Keys' fourteenth album 'Peaches!' is a blues covers record born from personal grief — Dan Auerbach's father was terminally ill during the sessions — and recorded live at Easy Eye Sound in Nashville with guitarist Kenny Brown, bassist Eric Deaton, and multi-instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus. Here's why its stripped-back return to R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough hits differently than a simple stylistic reset.
May 23, 2026
Kenny Wayne Shepherd Went Back to the Beginning — and Brought a Different Voice
Kenny Wayne Shepherd's "Ledbetter Heights (The 30th Anniversary Sessions)" re-records his landmark 1995 debut in full, with co-producer Jerry Harrison and drummer Chris "Whipper" Layton back in the room — and, for the first time, vocalist Noah Hunt singing material originally recorded with Corey Sterling. Here's why it works.
May 23, 2026
Taj Mahal at 84: A Lost Bill Withers Song, a 16-Year Wait, and One of the Year's Best Blues Albums
Taj Mahal's new album 'Time' — out May 1 via Resonatin' Records — was recorded in 2010 but arrives now carrying a previously unheard Bill Withers song, a 30-year band partnership, and proof that the 84-year-old blues legend has nothing left to prove and everything left to say.