Early jazz and ragtime legend Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, better known to the music world as Jelly Roll Morton, was reportedly born in New Orleans on this day in 1890 (but with no birth certificate, his birth date and year are uncertain). And while he did not invent...
Born in New Orleans on this day in 1878, Alphonse Picou was there for the birth of jazz. Picou, whose death in 1961 reportedly mourned with a massive funeral procession, is perhaps best known for originating the clarinet part on the jazz standard “High Society,” an...
Joseph Lee “Big Joe” Williams, born in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi, on this day in 1903 (or maybe 1899), is famous for his nine-string guitar, for mentoring a young Muddy Waters and for being the guy who popularized the song “Baby Please Don’t Go” (1935)...
“A belle of the blues with a head for business and a visceral gift as a songwriter, Victoria Spivey enjoyed a long career that took her from the role of ingenue to that of queen mother” — performing with such legendary artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Louis Armstrong...
Gravedigger, sculptor and American Delta blues musician James “Son” Thomas was “a Mississippi bluesman to the core,” according to his writeup at AllAboutBluesMusic.com. “His guitar playing, with its vigorous boogies and delicate fingerpicking passages, and his...