Paul Green has that Clark Kent thing going. By day, he is a mild-mannered consultant, at night, a blues harmonica superhero. No need to leap tall buildings when he can channel Paul Butterfield and ...

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 ...

Chicago blues great Billy Branch says a concert in Grant Park got him hooked on the music many decades ago. His latest album is “The Blues is My Biography.” ...

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 ...

“Classic Harmonica Blues,” out on May 21, features 20 tracks by the blues’ greatest harmonica players. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings In the early 20th-century, southern black ...

I’m not an especially fervent advocate of blues harmonica, but I do love the greats—both the Sonny Boy Williamsons, Big Walter Horton, much of Charlie Musselwhite‘s innovative output. But for me no ...

Toots Thielemans, a jazz harmonica player, guitarist and whistler whose 1961 composition “Bluesette” became a jazz standard, has died, the Associated Press reported Monday. He was 94. Belgian ...

MEMPHIS — When James Cotton was still a youngster, he'd come in after picking cotton all day under the broiling Mississippi sun to a payment of just 3 dollars. One day, he pulled out his harmonica on ...

Why are we asking for donations? Why are we asking for donations? This site is free thanks to our community of supporters. Voluntary donations from readers like you keep our news accessible for ...