This Week In The Blues: September 7 - September 13, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of September 7 - September 13, 2025

Some of the highlights include R&B pioneer Roy Brown, delta bluesman Robert "Wolfman" Belfour, and Guitar Shorty who is known for his explosive guitar style and wild stage antics.

Keep in mind that there's so much more that happened this week in the blues. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:
https://bigtrainblues.com
https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Photo credits (if known) and past episodes are posted on our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@BigTrainBlues

Here are links to a few of the artists or songs we've referenced in this week's episode:

Guitar Shorty - "Born Under a Bad Sign" (Live @The Venice West) - https://youtu.be/HWK64DK4oSs?si=sbtKTXXkmh0159FE

Robert Belfour - "Hill Stomp" (Live) - https://youtu.be/5Kmk1cBzCfw?si=wduAag-oF_EyiPOZ

Join me every weekday from 12:15pm-12:45pm CT to watch a live stream on Facebook of the longest running blues radio show program. https://www.facebook.com/DeltaCulturalCenter

We’ll have a new episode next week – we’ll see you then!

ARE YOU A FAN OF BLUES HISTORY? US TOO!

If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:

https://bigtrainblues.com

https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Transcript

Blues guitar player Little Milton was born September 7, 1934. He may not be a household name, but die-hard blues fans know Little Milton as a superb all-around electric bluesman—a soulful singer with an evocative guitar style, an accomplished songwriter, and a skillful bandleader. He’s often compared to B.B. King —as well as Bobby "Blue" Bland —for the way his signature style combines soul, blues, and R&B, a mixture that helped make him one of the biggest-selling bluesmen of the ’60s, even if he’s not as well-remembered as King.

Harmonica Fats was born September 8 in 1927. His career spanned 5 decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. He first achieved success with his cover version of the Hank Ballard song "Tore Up" in 1962, which established him as an in-demand session and touring musician. He is also remembered for his collaboration with blues guitarist Bernie Pearl, a partnership that resulted in four albums.

Guitar Shorty was born September 8 in 1939. He is well known for his explosive guitar style and wild stage antics. Credited with influencing both Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy, Guitar Shorty had been recording and touring from the 1950s up to his death in 2022. He learned to play the guitar at an early age and at age 16 he received his nickname, Guitar Shorty, when it mysteriously showed up on the marquee of the club he was playing as 'The Walter Johnson Band featuring Guitar Shorty.'

September 9, 1906 marks the birthday of blues pianist Hersal Thomas. He recorded a number of sides for Okeh Records in 1925 and 1926. He was one of several musicians in his family including his sister, the blues singer Sippie Wallace. Although he died at a young age, Thomas was nonetheless an influence on the Chicago boogie woogie school of pianists. Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis both cited him as an influence and called the Thomas track "The Fives" an essential boogie-woogie piano number.

R&B pioneer Roy Brown born September 10 in 1920! You need to put Brown’s name near the top of the list of R&B pioneers who exerted a primary influence on the development of rock & roll. His 1947 recording of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was covered by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more even Pat Boone. In addition, Brown’s soulful pleading, gospel-steeped delivery impacted the vocal styles of B.B. King, Bobby Bland, and Little Richard among many others.

September 11 in 1914 marks the day that "Saint Louis Blues" was published. It was composed by W. C. Handy and one of the first blues songs to succeed as a pop song. The 1925 version sung by Bessie Smith, with Louis Armstrong on cornet, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1993. 

delta bluesman Robert "Wolfman" Belfour was born on September 11, 1940. He was born in Red Banks, Mississippi and his father taught him to play guitar. He continued his tutelage in the blues from the musicians Otha Turner, R. L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough. His music was rooted in Mississippi hill country traditions, in contrast to Delta blues. His playing was characterized by a percussive attack and alternate tunings.

"Barbecue Bob" was born on September 11, 1902. Born Robert Hicks to a family of sharecroppers in Walnut Grove, GA, his nickname was derived from his working as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. This is one of the two existing photographs of him. Hicks is widely credited as being the singer who more than any helped to popularize Atlanta blues in its formative period. 

Alger "Texas" Alexander was born on September 12 back in 1900 in Jewett, Texas. Some claim he was the cousin of Lightnin' Hopkins, and the uncle of the Texas country blues guitarist Frankie Lee Sims. A short man with a big, deep voice, Alexander started his career performing on the streets and at parties and picnics in the Brazos River bottomlands. He sang the blues in a voice that sounds and feels today like that of Leadbelly, Washboard Sam, Henry Thomas, or Blind Lemon Jefferson, with whom he sang during the early 1920s.

Texas blues pianist "Black Boy Shine" was born on September 12, 1908. Little is known of his life outside of his recording career. We do know that he was born Harold Holiday, in Fort Bend County, Texas and spent most of his life based in the Fourth Ward of Houston. He was part of the 'Santa Fe Group', a loose ensemble of black blues pianists who played in the many juke joints abutting the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the 1920s and 1930s. 

blues master Charles Brown born September 13, 1922! Brown had seven Top 10 hits in the U.S. Billboard R&B chart between 1949 and 1952. His incredible piano skills and laid-back vocal delivery remained every bit as mesmerizing at the end of his life as they were way back in 1945, when his groundbreaking waxing of “Drifting Blues” with guitarist Johnny Moore ’s Three Blazers invented an entirely new blues genre for a postwar audience.

The blues standard "Stormy Monday" was first recorded on September 13, 1947.  It was written and recorded by blues electric guitarist T-Bone Walker and features his smooth, plaintive vocal and distinctive guitar work. As well as becoming a record chart hit in 1948, it inspired B.B. King and others to take up the electric guitar. "Stormy Monday" became Walker's best-known and most-recorded song, being covered in 1961 by Bobby "Blue" Bland, in 1971 by The Allman Brothers, and hundreds of others.

Well blues fans, we just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to follow our social media pages or visit our website at Big Train Blues.com. We’ll have a brand new episode next week and we’ll talk about BB King and Chicago blues harp player Snooky Pryor. It’s going to be a great show so….we’ll see you then!