Blues Moments in Time...

February 22 charts the blues slipping through the front door of mainstream culture and roaring back as a modern protest voice. In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we follow Elvis Presley’s 1956 hit “Heartbreak Hotel” as a slow-blues “Trojan horse” that smuggled Beale Street feeling onto the pop charts and accidentally sparked a 1960s blues revival, sending young listeners digging for Muddy Waters, Son House, and Howlin’ Wolf.

We then jump to 2019 and Gary Clark Jr.’s This Land, where fuzz-drenched riffs turn Woody Guthrie’s optimism into a battlecry of Black ownership and survival. Along the way, we drop into Jabo Smith’s 1929 “Sleepy Time Blues” as the Delta puts on a sharp Chicago “city suit,” and honor Texas Johnny Brown, Ernie K‑Doe, Papa John Creach, and Linsey Alexander—artists who prove the blues is still a living, breathing documentary of the Black experience.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 21 captures the blues in motion—from revolution to the White House, from “race records” to the pop charts. In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we trace how the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X pushed Black American music from polished optimism into a grittier, electrified, politically charged sound that helped fuel funk and blues‑rock, and how B.B. King’s 1970 hit “The Thrill Is Gone” broke through the pop Top 20, tearing down the wall between segregated “race records” and mainstream America.

We then jump to the 2012 “Red, White, and Blues” concert at the White House, where President Barack Obama joined Buddy Guy and B.B. King on “Sweet Home Chicago”—a surreal vindication for a music born in the Jim Crow South. Along the way, we honor the births of Nina Simone and Corey Harris, and the twin 2013 losses of Magic Slim and Cletha Staples, whose lives embodied the tavern and church branches of the blues.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

This episode traces the powerful crossroads of February 20—from Frederick Douglass’s passing in 1895 and the rise of the blues under Jim Crow, to the electric defiance of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. We jump to 1962, when Lightning Hopkins improvised a blues tribute as John Glenn orbited Earth, and spotlight key February 20 birthdays that shaped the genre. A date that proves the blues doesn’t just remember history—it reports it, responds to it, and plays a little louder every time.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 19th captures the blues in motion—from global Black consciousness to the electrified sound of mid‑century Chicago and the roar of arena rock. We begin in 1919, when W.E.B. Du Bois convenes the first Pan‑African Congress in Paris, laying the intellectual groundwork for the New Negro movement and building the cultural confidence that helped open the recording industry to Black artists like Mamie Smith just a year later.

The date also intersects with World War II and the “Double V” campaign. On February 19, 1945, as U.S. forces land on Iwo Jima, Black Marines fight abroad while demanding dignity at home. Returning veterans refuse Jim Crow and head north, fueling the Great Migration and transforming the blues from rural folk expression into an electrified urban shout.

That same day in Chicago, Big Bill Broonzy records with Big Maceo and Buster Bennett, capturing the “Bluebird beat”—a polished, swinging bridge between Delta roots and the amplified power soon to define Muddy Waters’ era.

We also mark the birth of Mississippi’s Sam Myers in 1936, a drummer‑turned‑harmonica powerhouse whose voice carried the stark truths of life and death, and the 1980 passing of AC/DC’s Bon Scott, a rocker whose shouting, 12‑bar swagger showed just how far the blues could travel.

February 19th stands as a snapshot of transition—intellectual, political, and musical—showing how the blues moves from Paris to Chicago to global stages without ever losing its pulse.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 18th pulls together moral resistance, civil rights sacrifice, and some of the most important turning points in modern Black music. We start in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where a small group of Quakers draft the first formal protest against slavery in the English colonies—a quiet but radical act that lights the torch of moral resistance at the heart of the blues. Nearly three centuries later, in 1965, Alabama activist Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot while protecting his family during a protest in Marion; his death becomes the spark for the Selma to Montgomery marches and helps push the blues toward a harder, electrified edge that matches the violence of the times.

Musically, February 18th is a Big Bang date. In 1959, Ray Charles records “What’d I Say,” tearing down the wall between the church and the dance hall and effectively inventing soul music by fusing gospel fervor with blues grit. Eleven years later, the Allman Brothers Band cut “Statesboro Blues,” electrifying a 1920s country blues tune for the rock generation and proving the blues is a living language that can cross time, race, and genre.

We also mark the births of two foundational voices: Lonnie Johnson, who essentially invents the modern guitar solo and shows the instrument can sing like a human voice, and Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” whose records have carried her city’s joy and sorrow for decades. The day also holds the passing of Snooks Eaglin in 2009—the blind New Orleans “human jukebox” whose limitless repertoire and funky, bluesy guitar web embodied the idea that this music is lived, not just played.

February 18th stands as a reminder that the blues is a running report from the front lines—rooted in protest, reshaped by innovation, and carried forward by artists who turn suffering into soul.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.