Blues Moments in Time...

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we trace January 29 as a fault line where law and music collide. We start in the 19th century, with Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 and Mississippi’s short-lived 1873 civil rights bill—moments that built the legal scaffolding of slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow. These aren’t just dates in a textbook; they’re the backdrop to every blues lyric about a “mean old world” and a “high sheriff” who never played fair.

From there, we move to January 29, 1992, and the passing of Willie Dixon—the bassist, songwriter, and producer whose work at Chess Records became the blueprint for modern blues, rock, and soul, and whose legal battles helped secure artists’ rights. Finally, we meet Jonny Lang, born January 29, 1981, a teenage prodigy who carried that legacy into the age of MTV and streaming. Together, these stories reveal January 29 as a day where courtrooms, state houses, and recording studios all feed the same river: the blues as a lifelong argument for dignity, justice, and emotional truth.

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, we stop the clock on January 28—a single date that captures the blues as a living, breathing continuum. We move from the elegant Piedmont finger-picking of Luke Jordan, born January 28, 1892, to the community-rooted legacy of DC Minner, born January 28, 1935 in an all-Black Oklahoma town, and finally to the passing of Alabama harmonica original J-Bird Coleman on January 28, 1950.

Set against the tense political backdrop of McCarthyism, early Civil Rights organizing, and the rise of television, we drop into 1950 as Sam Phillips opens his Memphis studio and Muddy Waters and Little Walter refine the amplified Chicago sound at Chess Records. This episode traces how one date threads together front-porch Piedmont blues, smoke-filled Chicago clubs, and schoolroom blues education—showing that the music is never frozen in time. It’s a torch, passed from hand to hand, generation to generation.

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 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.