Blues Moments in Time...

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 8 becomes a crossroads where battlefields, politics, and backbeats all meet. We start with the Battle of New Orleans and trace how a 19th‑century skirmish turned into the fiddle tune “The 8th of January” and, eventually, the hit “The Battle of New Orleans”—a piece of southern storytelling cut from the same cloth as the blues, capturing place, pride, and memory in melody.

From there, we move to 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” declaration, a moment when the nation finally named the conditions that shaped the very communities who are the blues. We explore how the amplified, weary blues of the 1960s carried the tension between promise and betrayal, federal investment and ongoing displacement, hope and hard reality.

January 8 is also a musical birthday roll call: Tampa Red, “The Guitar Wizard” who helped define Chicago blues guitar; Elvis Presley, the rockabilly lightning rod who carried blues structures to a global stage while raising hard questions about credit and compensation; and Shirley Bassey, whose dramatic, orchestral pop still bears the unmistakable imprint of blues feeling.

And in the relative quiet of recorded deaths on this date, we sit with what’s missing—the unmarked graves, unknown dates, and lost stories of countless blues artists. January 8 reminds us that the blues is a river fed by remembered legends and forgotten lives alike, all flowing into the music we hear today.

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 zoom in on January 7—a date that captures the blues in motion: migrating, electrifying, protesting, and reinventing itself. We follow the Great Migration as it carries the solitary acoustic blues of the Mississippi Delta into the crowded streets of Chicago, where the music plugs in, turns up, and becomes the raw, urban sound of Chicago blues and the backbone of “race records” that sold not just songs, but stories of escape and aspiration.

At the heart of the episode is Muddy Waters’ January 7, 1954 recording of “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man”—a stop-time, chest-thumping declaration that helped define electric Chicago blues and laid a blueprint for the rock and roll revolution. Along the way, we meet Alabama-born DIY trailblazer Bob Jenkins and bassist Rod Hicks of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, whose work bridged musical innovation and the Civil Rights era’s push for integration.

We also mark the losses of British blues sparkplug Cyril Davies and soul great James Carr, tracing how their sounds—whether through the British blues boom or the aching honesty of “The Dark End of the Street”—carry the same stories of struggle, resilience, and hope. January 7 becomes a living snapshot of the blues as coded protest, cultural migration, and a history still humming beneath modern music.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

Join Kelvin Huggins as he dives deep into the tangled roots and resonant echoes of blues history.

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we zero in on January 6—a day where blues-soaked music crashes headlong into cultural conservatism, joyful pop spectacle, and raw political truth. From Elvis Presley being filmed only from the waist up on national TV to contain his “blues-infused” energy, to a studio audience spontaneously inventing the “YMCA” dance on American Bandstand, we explore how music keeps testing the limits of what the mainstream will accept.

We trace the blues back to its roots in Southern work songs and prison fields, where it emerged as a voice of protest and survival, a first draft of the story later sung by the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. Along the way, we drop the needle on key January 6 milestones: Frampton Comes Alive, Pink Floyd beginning Wish You Were Here, the Rolling Stones’ first headlining tour, and Carly Simon’s chart-topping “You’re So Vain.”

We also mark the births of Kim Wilson and Earl Scruggs, and honor the passing of giants like Dizzy Gillespie and Lou Rawls—artists who carried the blues’ spirit of defiance, innovation, and soul into new musical worlds. January 6 becomes more than a date; it’s a snapshot of how the blues keeps pushing, protesting, and pulsing through modern music.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

Join Kelvin Huggins as he dives deep into the tangled roots and resonant echoes of blues history.

On this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we drop the needle on January 5—a date where the blues, history, and activism all collide. From the Great Migration and the rise of the Chitlin’ Circuit to the blues as a living form of testimony against Jim Crow and racial injustice, we trace how this music became both a soundtrack and a weapon in the struggle for equality.

We celebrate the births of Elizabeth Cotten, Wilbert Harrison, and Johnny Adams—artists whose genius reshaped folk, R&B, and soul—and reflect on the passing of towering figures like Charles Mingus, whose bass lines and compositions burned with righteous anger. Along the way, we connect the early steps of Bruce Springsteen and a young Prince to the deep roots of the blues, showing how its tendrils reach into every corner of modern music.

This isn’t just a date on the calendar—it’s a reminder that the blues is a living, breathing tradition, still carrying stories of hardship, resistance, and hope.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

January 4th reads like a time‑lapse of the blues—how it was born in struggle, electrified onstage, commercialized in boardrooms, and woven into the DNA of global popular music. In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, Kelvin Huggins traces how a single winter date captures the journey of the blues from Southern folk expression to worldwide cultural force.

We start with the commercial and cultural shift marked by CBS buying the Fender Guitar Company in 1965—turning the Telecasters and Stratocasters that powered Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy from working musicians’ tools into corporate assets. From there, we jump to Hamburg’s Star Club, whose 1975 reopening reminds us how European venues became shrines to American R&B and blues, shaping bands like The Beatles before they helped launch the British Invasion.

Kelvin then digs into the political heartbeat of the blues—music born in the shadow of Jim Crow, Parchman Prison, and a legal system stacked against Black Americans. The blues emerges here as more than entertainment: it’s protest, testimony, and survival, the sound of a people insisting on being heard.

January 4th also proves to be a landmark recording day. We revisit a young Elvis Presley cutting a demo in 1954 that would help ignite rock and roll, then step into Chess Records in 1967, where Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Little Walter convene for a Super Blues session on the very same day The Doors unleash their dark, blues‑infused debut. Two years later, Fleetwood Mac make their own pilgrimage to Chess, recording with their Chicago heroes in a moment of deep respect and musical communion.

Along the way, we mark the births of Sonny Blake, an authentic Memphis blues voice, and John McLaughlin, a genre‑bending guitarist who carried the language of the blues into jazz fusion and beyond. And we pause to remember Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and Ray Thomas of The Moody Blues—artists whose rock legacies were rooted in blues feeling, storytelling, and grit.

January 4th, in the end, isn’t just a date on the calendar. It’s a snapshot of the blues’ full arc: from juke joints to global stages, from protest to profit, from the Delta to Hamburg and back again—proving once more that beneath so much of modern music, the blues is still beating.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.