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 ...

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 ...

Among the harmonica’s many wonderful and unique traits, there is this: You have to really suck to be good at it. As one of America’s finest and busiest harmonica players, Denver’s Ronnie Shellist ...

Brody Buster performs as a one-man band before a Royals game at Kauffman Stadium in June. It's been twenty years since Brody Buster's first round of glory days — when he was a 10-year-old blues ...

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 ...

“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 ...

PORT ARTHUR, Texas — A Port Arthur blues harmonica player who toured the world and played with many jazz and blues greats has died. Paul Orta, 61, died at home in Port Arthur at 9:30 p.m. with his ...

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 ...

For the past few months, the great Chicago blues harmonica player Sugar Blue has been on the run – from the coronavirus. His flight has taken him from Shanghai to Milan to the mountains of Italy to ...

You can be sure that folks on the historic downtown hotel’s patio were standing throughout the concert. Hummel expects the same when he and Funderburgh return for the 12th annual KXCI House Rockin’ ...

Tony Glover, a harmonica player who as a member of the group Koerner, Ray and Glover was at the center of the folk music revival of the 1960s and helped introduce a new audience to the blues, died on ...