In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 27 becomes a day where history’s heaviest shadows and music’s brightest sparks sit side by side. We begin with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, drawing a line between that global reckoning with atrocity and the blues as a vessel for suffering, survival, and the demand to be seen as fully human. The same emotional current that runs through memorial candles and testimonies runs through 12‑bar laments and soul‑deep shouts.

We then flip the switch—literally—to 1880, when Thomas Edison’s light bulb patent helped create the modern night: clubs, bars, theaters, and, eventually, recording studios where blues musicians could plug in, turn up, and be documented. Electric light didn’t just change how we see; it changed where and when the blues could be played, recorded, and remembered.

January 27 is also a birthday roll call for two giants: Elmore James, born in 1918, whose slide guitar could cut straight through the soul and whose riffs would echo in the work of players like Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King; and Bobby “Blue” Bland, born in 1930, whose smooth, gospel‑infused vocals helped shape modern soul blues and left a catalog singers still study like scripture.

Around them, the date traces the blues’ cross‑genre fingerprints: Elvis Presley releasing “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956, a rock and roll milestone built on blues structure and emotion; the 2014 passing of Pete Seeger, who carried songs like “Goodnight Irene” from Lead Belly’s world into the American mainstream and tied folk, blues, and activism together; and the Punch Brothers’ The Phosphorescent Blues in 2015, a roots‑steeped acoustic record that shows how the genre’s DNA keeps resurfacing in new forms.

January 27 stands as a microcosm of the blues itself—birth and loss, darkness and illumination, slide guitars and protest songs—reminding us that this music is a universal language of resilience, forever carrying history’s weight and still finding new ways to shine.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 26 becomes a powerful meeting point of invasion, survival, protest, and sound. From Invasion Day/Survival Day and the 1938 Day of Mourning in Australia to the U.S. Civil Rights echoes inside the blues, we explore how music and resistance share the same emotional core—truth-telling, resilience, and identity reclamation.

We then trace how that core travels through time and genre: into Eddie Van Halen’s blues-soaked rock guitar, Prince’s funk-and-soul alchemy, and Billie Eilish’s stark, confessional pop. Along the way, we spotlight Alexis Korner and the global spread of the blues as a foundational language beneath modern music.

January 26 isn’t just a date on the calendar—it’s a reminder that every groove holds a memory, and every note carries the weight of history, survival, and the ongoing fight to be heard.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Listen Tomorrow for: Another Blues Moment in Time

Keep the blues alive.

© 2025 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 25 becomes a date where machines, empires, and human voices all collide around the blues. We start in 1920 with the premiere of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R., the work that gave the world the word “robot” and announced a new, mechanical age. While factories roared and the idea of replaceable workers took hold, blues musicians were out there doing the opposite—putting names, fears, hopes, and everyday truths back into a world that was starting to feel cold and automated. The blues became the human counterweight to a century speeding up.

We zoom out further to 1554 and the founding of São Paulo, a reminder that long before the first 12‑bar progression, colonial power and forced migration were setting the stage for the African diaspora. Those global shifts—ports, plantations, and new cities—created the conditions in which the blues would eventually emerge in the American South as a distinct, defiant art form: a way for displaced people to claim identity and voice inside someone else’s system.

January 25 is also a birthday roll call for two giants who show the range of what the blues can be. Blind Willie Johnson, born in 1897, carved out the sound of gospel blues with his searing slide guitar and apocalyptic vocals—records from the late 1920s that still feel like they’re coming straight out of the earth. And Etta James, born in 1938, carried that same emotional fire into soul, gospel, and pop, turning every song into a lived confession and dragging the blues into mid‑ and late‑20th‑century radio, stages, and soundtracks.

There are no marquee blues deaths tied to January 25, which makes it feel less like a day of endings and more like a day of beginnings and reflections—a moment to think about the countless known and unknown artists who gave this music its shape. January 25 reminds us that the blues has always sat at the crossroads of history and humanity: forged in colonial shadows, sung over industrial noise, and carried forward by voices that refuse to sound mechanical, no matter how fast the world turns.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

On this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we drop the needle on January 24—a date that quietly sits at the crossroads of blues, country, empire, and pop culture. We trace how Hank Williams Sr.’s 1949 release of “Lovesick Blues” carried blues phrasing and emotional storytelling straight into the heart of mainstream country, blurring genre lines and revealing just how deep the blues runs in American music.

From there, we jump to the birth of John Belushi, whose work with The Blues Brothers helped ignite a late-20th-century blues revival, using film, television, and live performance to reintroduce legends to a new generation. Finally, we zoom out to 1901 and the death of Queen Victoria, exploring how the end of the Victorian era and shifting colonial structures shaped the conditions of the African diaspora—and, ultimately, the world that birthed the blues as a voice of resilience and identity.

This is January 24: not a single headline moment, but an echo of legacy—where every guitar bend and soulful lyric carries the weight of history forward.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 23 shows up as a bridge date—linking chain gangs and street corners to Broadway stages and European radio countdowns. We start with Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, born this day in 1888, whose 12‑string guitar and booming voice carried the stories of the Jim Crow South from prison farms to Northern concert halls. His songs—about work, violence, love, and survival—turned Black suffering into a global conversation and helped define what we now call American roots music.

We then walk alongside Reverend Dan Smith, another January 23rd child, blowing harmonica and preaching gospel blues on city sidewalks, insisting that Black lives and Black faith mattered in neighborhoods marked by poverty and neglect. From there, we step into the world of May Barnes and the Mills Brothers, where the blues slips into Broadway, cabarets, and radio—Charleston steps, smooth harmonies, and songs like “St. Louis Blues” quietly smuggling Black repertoire into mainstream American sound.

January 23 also lives in the present tense: European radio specials crowning French rocker Manu Blandon’s Man on a Mission, and new releases like Elise Frank’s I Didn’t Pay for It keeping the focus on truth‑telling, vulnerability, and grit. Along the way, we remember John Mills Jr., gone at 25, whose work with the Mills Brothers helped normalize Black vocal groups on records and radio, blending jazz, pop, and blues into a new popular language.

Taken together, January 23 traces the blues’ long journey—from Southern fields to Northern studios, from storefront churches to folk festivals, from juke joints to international airwaves—proving that this music is still a living conversation, not a relic, and that its core job hasn’t changed: tell the truth, no matter where the microphone is.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 22 becomes a date where money, law, and music all collide around the blues. We start in 1943 with the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, a labor showdown over royalties that shut down studio sessions and hit Black blues musicians especially hard. It’s a reminder that behind every beloved record is a fight over who gets paid, who gets credited, and who gets left out of the deal.

We then move to 1964 and the ratification of the 24th Amendment, abolishing the poll tax—a key brick pulled out of the wall of Jim Crow. That political victory reshaped the world the blues was singing about, loosening the grip of voter suppression and pushing the music’s stories of resilience and injustice into a new era of civil rights and possibility.

On the musical side, January 22 tracks the genre’s evolution. In 1957, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio cut “Lonesome Train on a Lonesome Road” in Nashville, a rockabilly blast that shows how directly the blues fed into early rock and carried its energy all the way to places like Australia. And in the life and work of Barry Goldberg—who would later play with Dylan at Newport and help define blues‑rock keyboards—we hear how those same roots got wired into amplifiers and pushed onto festival stages.

Threaded through the date are the lives of Hammie Nixon, the Memphis jug and harmonica man whose riffs powered Sleepy John Estes; and Sam Cooke, born this day in 1931, whose gospel‑soaked voice and songwriting carried the emotional honesty of the blues into soul and pop. January 22 reveals the blues as both protest and blueprint—a soundtrack to labor battles and voting rights, and the deep foundation under rockabilly, soul, and electrified blues‑rock.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 21 becomes a tour through the libraries, studios, and bandstands that prove the blues is both archive and engine. We start in 1982 with B.B. King’s quiet revolution: donating his massive personal collection of records to the University of Mississippi. In one move, “Blues Royalty” takes the music from juke joints to the stacks, insisting that these 78s and LPs be treated not as disposable entertainment, but as protected cultural heritage and serious history for scholars, students, and anyone willing to listen closely.

From there, we drop into Chess Records on January 21, 1957, as Chuck Berry cuts “School Days”—a rock and roll anthem built on blues riffs, storytelling lyrics, and a backbeat that would launch a thousand bands. We trace that same backbone through the drumming of Francis Clay, whose blend of jazz finesse and blues power with Muddy Waters helped define the feel of electric Chicago blues and quietly schooled a generation of British rock drummers.

January 21 is also a date of loss and lineage: the passing of Champion Jack Dupree, the New Orleans barrelhouse storyteller who kept the raw, rocking spirit of early blues alive; the death of Charles Brown, whose smooth West Coast sound proved the blues could be as elegant as it was earthy; and the birthday of Zora Young, a singer who threads traditional blues, gospel, and contemporary grooves into one living voice.

Taken together, January 21 shows the blues in all its rooms—archived in universities, roaring out of Chicago studios, rolling from New Orleans pianos, gliding through West Coast lounges, and carried forward by modern voices. It’s a reminder that the genre is not one sound but a whole house of styles, all built on the same deep foundation.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 20 stands as one of the most powerful dual anniversaries on the blues calendar — the birth of Lead Belly in 1888 and the passing of Etta James in 2012. Together, they form a kind of hinge in American music history: one artist who turned the struggles of his era into a living cultural record, and another whose voice carried that emotional truth into the modern age with unmatched force.

We begin with Lead Belly, the Louisiana-born giant whose 12‑string guitar and booming voice made him more than a musician — he became a chronicler of America itself. His songs captured presidents, movie stars, prison walls, labor fights, and the everyday hopes of ordinary people. He sang about the Scottsboro boys, about injustice, about the South he came from, and about the world he saw changing around him. January 20 becomes a reminder that the blues has always been political, always been a voice for the voiceless, always been a record of the country’s heartbeat.

Then we turn to Etta James, whose death on this date in 2012 marked the end of one of the most emotionally fearless careers in American music. Her voice — raw, volcanic, tender, and unguarded — could shake the walls of any room. She moved effortlessly between blues, soul, and R&B, carrying the genre’s emotional vocabulary into new spaces and new generations. Her performances didn’t just tell stories; they broke your heart and stitched it back together in the same breath.

January 20 reminds us that the blues is both archive and emotion — a record of struggle and a vessel for truth. Through Lead Belly’s storytelling and Etta James’ soul-deep delivery, the date captures the full sweep of what the blues has always been: history you can feel, memory you can hear, and a living testament to the American experience.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2025 The Blues Hotel Collective.