Blues

<p><span class="deck">Robert Johnson died in obscurity in 1938. Since then, he has gradually gained recognition as a genius of American music. Only recently have the facts of his short, tragic life become known.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">The great Louisiana bluesman made his first recordings inside Angola Penitentiary.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Ethel Waters was an innovative and terrifically influential singer, and she broke through racial barriers in movies, theater, nightclubs, radio, film, and television, opening doors for everyone who came after her. She deserves to be much better remembered.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">You’ve probably never heard of them, but these ten people changed your life. Each of them is a big reason why your world today is so different from anyone’s world in 1954.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">In a sordid new biography, the great blues singer’s life has eclipsed her art.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Bessie Smith was the greatest blues singer of all time, and her influence still permeates popular music, though almost no one listens to her records. Here's an appreciation by an eminent jazz singer.</span></p>

<p>Memphis, the home of the blues, was a college of learning for me.</p>

<p><span class="deck">A gracious antebellum city of stern-wheelers and cotton money; a restless, violent city with a hot grain of genius at its heart; a city of calamity, desolation, and rebirth; a city that changed the way the whole world hears music. It’s all the same city, and it is this year’s Great American Place. Thomas Childers answers a summons to Memphis, Tennessee.</span></p>

<p>A longtime expert on blues music recounts what it was like to work with one of America's greatest musicians.</p>