In the mid-1800s, a German harmonica manufacturer named Hohner started exporting his product to North America. Being relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to play and extremely portable, the ...

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, ... Telarc Blues culls their considerable holdings to provide a wholly satisfying collection of contemporary blues harmonica by contemporary and ...

Fat, brassy sounds fill Cafe Van Kleef in downtown Oakland as Mark Hummel blows a slow Muddy Waters blues into his amplified B-flat Hohner harmonica. An off-white Dobbs shantung Panama hat rests on ...

Well my first friend went down when I was 17 years old. There’s one thing I can say about that boy — he died bold. These famous words from the Nick Gravenites song Born In Chicago launched one of the ...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — James Cotton, a Grammy Award-winning blues harmonica master whose full-throated sound backed such blues legends as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Howlin’ Wolf, has died ...

If you ask James Montgomery if he remembers playing the Shaboo inn in Willimantic back in the day — the legendary local club that closed in 1982 — he’ll hem and haw and scratch his head and say “The ...

Mississippi blues harp player James Cotton was certainly considered lucky for the break he got joining Muddy Waters’ band in the late 1950s, taking over a spot previously held by such venerated ...

Cash awards totaling $2,500 and the opportunity to perform at the 25th Annual Battle of the Blues Harps in Long Beach, Southern California’s longest running blues harmonica event featuring top acts ...

Hear Brandon Bailey perform two songs live in the NPR studio. The harmonica is a staple of American blues, beginning with the Memphis jug bands of the 1920s. In the 1960s, blues-influenced artists ...

Blues harmonica virtuoso and onetime Muddy Waters sideman James Cotton died on Thursday at a medical center in Austin of pneumonia. He was 81. A rep for the musician confirmed his death. Cotton, who ...