Blues Progressions

There's a sound in the blues that doesn't play notes so much as it cries them. That's slide guitar — the instrument that sounds most like a human voice weeping and singing at once. We start the series here.
Why slide sounds like a voice: gliding between pitches, no frets, the notes between the notes
Delta roots: W.C. Handy's Tutwiler train-station encounter, the diddley bow, Hawaiian steel, resonator guitars, gospel slide
Open tunings (open G/D/E) — how one bar of glass plays the whole 12-bar
The players: Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Willie McTell → Muddy Waters & Robert Nighthawk electrify it in Chicago → Elmore James turns it into a rock riff ("Dust My Broom") → Duane Allman makes it soar (At Fillmore East, "Statesboro Blues," "Layla") → Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Bonnie Raitt carry it on
Tone Recipe: glass vs metal slide, open tunings, light touch + heavy muting + vibrato, tube-amp sustain
Progression Spotlight: the 12-bar blues, I–IV–V, turnarounds, minor-key variation, blue notes
 

The finale brings it home to right now. Joe Bonamassa as the model for the modern DIY blues-rock empire (and his Royal Albert Hall night with Clapton); Gary Clark Jr. fusing the blues with everything modern ("This Land"); Kingfish carrying it straight out of Clarksdale, mentored by Buddy Guy — the living, unbroken chain. The 2000s garage-blues wave (White Stripes, Black Keys) that snuck the blues back onto the radio; Marcus King at the blues/Southern-rock crossroads; Larkin Poe and Samantha Fish leading a more open genre; the global scene; and streaming putting the whole 100-year history in your pocket. Then the close: six episodes recapped as one unbroken, hand-to-hand river — and the host's parting gift, handing the listener the thread, with a promise that Blues Progressions keeps going.
 

The loudest, most virtuosic chapter. The power trio as an invention (Cream) that forces the guitar into godhood; the extended live jam traced straight back to call-and-response; "Crossroads" as a Robert Johnson song turned rocket; the Marshall-stack volume arms race; Clapton and Duane Allman's "Layla" crossing threads with the Southern Rock series. Then Hendrix — a chitlin'-circuit bluesman to the core, discovered by a Brit and flown to London, who used feedback and the studio as instruments, called his music the "electric church," and turned the national anthem into a howl at Woodstock. And Johnny Winter — Texas fire who turned around and produced Muddy Waters' Grammy-winning comeback, paying the whole debt back. The secret hero throughout: volume itself as a new expressive tool.
 

The wilderness and the morning after. How disco, punk, new wave, and hair metal pushed blues rock to the margins (Muddy Waters died in '83; the industry called the blues a museum piece) — and how it survived underground in clubs, festivals (the Chicago Blues Festival launched in '84), and the hands of the faithful. Robert Cray and George Thorogood cracking the door; then the full revival: Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time," Gary Moore's "Still Got the Blues," Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker finally getting paid while alive, Clapton's "Unplugged" and "From the Cradle" walking a mass audience back to the Delta — and SRV's 1990 death turning him into a north star. The host's own chapter: never stopping listening, the Allman/Gov't Mule/Tedeschi-Trucks lineage, and running sound & lights for the NJ blues/Southern-rock cover band Crossfire — keeping the flame lit in the small rooms.
 

The hinge of the series — the blues comes home to America, to Texas. The Lone Star blues bloodline (T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday," Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddie King); ZZ Top as a ferocious blues-rock power trio hiding inside MTV fame ("La Grange" off John Lee Hooker); the Austin scene at Antone's where young players learned from the masters in person. Then the centerpiece: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble — Number One, the heavy strings, Montreux and Bowie's "Let's Dance," "Texas Flood," his Albert King and Hendrix worship, his hard-won sobriety and "In Step," and the 1990 helicopter crash. Plus the host's own life-changing SRV epiphany — the note that sent him digging backward and, in more ways than one, the reason this show exists
 

The fuse from Episode 1 catches. How a generation of British kids fell for American blues records and handed the music back louder: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated as the hub; the underground club scene (the Marquee, Eel Pie Island); the race-and-radio reason it took outsiders; the Rolling Stones as a Chess cover band; the Animals and Them; John Mayall's Bluesbreakers as the guitar-hero factory (Clapton, Green, Mick Taylor); the 1966 "Beano" album and the Les-Paul-into-cranked-Marshall tone that defined rock guitar; the Yardbirds pipeline (Clapton → Beck → Page); Cream and the power trio; Peter Green's blues-band Fleetwood Mac; Led Zeppelin's blues bones — and the honest reckoning about credit and payment owed to the Black originators. Ends with the round-trip: the Stones putting Howlin' Wolf on American TV, and Hendrix flown to London.
 

The opener of a brand-new six-part series — with a warm welcome back to the Southern Rock (Southbound)crowd and an open door for newcomers. We define blues rock (the blues plus rock volume, drums, andattitude), then lay the foundation: the 12-bar form and the bent blue note; the Great Migration thatcarried the Delta to Chicago; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Chess Records; LittleWalter electrifying the harmonica; T-Bone Walker making the guitar a lead voice in Texas; and thethree Kings — B.B., Albert, and Freddie — who wrote the complete guitar vocabulary every rock herowould go on to steal. Ends by setting up the great irony: America's overlooked blues, loved andhanded back by British kids — and the full six-episode map.

Fresh on the heels of my series on Southern Rock, I am launching the next series on Blues Rock starting July 17!

A band like Blackberry Smoke or the Marcus King Band walks out to a sold-out room tonight — and you can’t quite name what it is. Southern Rock? Blues-rock? Country? Americana? All of it? The finale brings the whole story home: who carries it now, how it evolved, and how a porch sound went global. 

1980: Capricorn Records goes bankrupt and the press writes the obituary — Southern Rock is dead. They got it completely wrong. It didn’t die; it went underground, and the faithful kept the fire lit in the small rooms. The host was one of them — behind the board for a Jersey cover band.