Steve Knopper

Most bands that play this kind of rote roadhouse blues-rock--with Dr. John-lite singing, nothing-special solos and flat production--are unlikely to advance beyond their local watering holes. But this is no...

Still the consummate Chicago blues-club singer, even after moving to Lincoln, Neb., Morris "Magic Slim" Holt plays a set like the one on this live album hundreds of nights every...

Still the consummate Chicago blues-club singer, even after moving to Lincoln, Neb., Morris "Magic Slim" Holt plays a set like the one on this live album hundreds of nights every...

"Bring 'Em In" isn't veteran Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy's best, but it's the one that makes him sound the most like himself. Weirdly, he achieves this effect with a risky...

The "legend and superstar friends" formula is well past its expiration date. But something unexpected happens on King's follow-up to his last superstar-friends album, 1997's leaden "Deuces Wild": The blues...

The blues are too limited for Corey Harris, the veteran Charlottesville, Va., singer-guitarist who narrated an episode of Martin Scorsese's 2003 PBS series on the genre. His strategy is to...

Bad luck is all that separates the late Blind Arvella Gray, a seminal '60s Chicago street singer and dobro player, from more frequently recorded contemporaries. Born in Somerville, Texas, Gray...

One of the best singers in modern blues, if not all of pop music, 26-year-old Shemekia Copeland has finally found the right producer--Steve Cropper, guitarist for Booker T. and the...

As he has flailed around for a signature style over the last decade, talented Oakland guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart has covered Rudy Vallee, Captain Beefheart and Robert Johnson, and turned...

As he has flailed around for a signature style over the last decade, talented Oakland guitarist Alvin Youngblood Hart has covered Rudy Vallee, Captain Beefheart and Robert Johnson, and turned...