This Week In The Blues: October 12 - October 18, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of October 12 - October 18, 2025

Some of the highlights include delta blues guitar player "Big Joe" Williams, "The Things That I Used to Do" was recorded by Guitar Slim in New Orleans, and "Father of Rock and Roll" Chuck Berry.

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 Slim "The Things That I Used to Do" - https://youtu.be/fj33EGMbazY?si=guvu7GQb9QniwDuy

Chuck Berry Live in London 1972 - https://youtu.be/c7i4y8qNCn8?si=PJ2f4gl4wxgULnz_

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

 This Week In The Blues: Oct 12 - Oct 18, 2025

Guitar Gabriel was born on October 12, 1925. His unique style of guitar playing, which he referred to as "Toot Blues", combined Piedmont, Chicago, and Texas blues, as well as gospel. By the age of 15, he traveled playing the guitar in medicine shows during his late 20s. While he was with these shows traveling around,  he found his trademark white sheepskin hat. During his career he performed with artists such as Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, T-Bone Walker and Jimmy Reed.

R&B singer Nappy Brown was born on October 12, 1929! He began his career singing gospel music before switching to R&B. In 1954 he won a recording contract with Savoy Records which yielded a string of hits. Brown's powerful voice, combined with his distinctive emotive style, is widely viewed as a key link in the development of soul music. Bellowing the blues with gospel-inspired ferocity, Brown rode rock & roll’s first wave for a few good years before his records stopped selling.

Blues guitar player Kenny Neal was born October 14, 1957 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Neal preserves the blues sound of his native south Louisiana, as you would expect from someone who learned from Slim Harpo, Buddy Guy, and his father, harmonica player Raful Neal. He comes from a musical family and has often performed with his brothers

Blues guitar player Jimmy Liggins was born on October 14, 1918 in Newby, OK. When he was in his teens, he moved with his family to San Diego, California in 1932. He fought under the name of Kid Zulu as a professional boxer until age 18, when he began as a driver for his brother Joe's band, the Honeydrippers. Liggins started his own recording career as a singer, guitarist, and leader of the Drops of Joy.

blues singer and musician Edna Hicks was form on October 14, 1891 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her recorded songs include "Hard Luck Blues" and "Poor Me Blues". She also recorded "Down Hearted Blues", and "Gulf Coast Blues" on the Brunswick label in 1923. She was popular in black vaudeville in the American Midwest in the late 1910s and 1920s, appeared often in Chicago and Cincinnati, and made recordings for seven different record labels in 1923 and 1924

James "Son" Thomas was born on October 14, 1926 near Eden, MS.  As a self-taught guitar player, he learned to play songs from older blues guitarists Elmore Davis and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. While working as gravedigger, he was also a folk artist, making sculptures from unfired clay, which he dug out of the banks of the Yazoo River. His most famous sculpted images were skulls (often featuring actual human teeth), which mirrored his job as a gravedigger and his often-stated philosophy that "we all end up in the clay".

blues singer Victoria Spivey, born in Houston, Texas on October 15, 1906. Spivey was one of the more influential blues women simply because she was around long enough to influence legions of younger women and men who rediscovered blues music during the mid-’60s U.S. blues revival. Spivey could do it all: she wrote songs, sang them well, and accompanied herself on piano and organ, and occasionally ukulele. 

Delta blues guitar player "Big Joe" Williams was born October 16, 1903. He actually played a nine-string guitar. Born near Crawford, Mississippi, as a youth began wandering across the United States busking and playing in stores, bars, alleys and work camps. During the early 1930s, Williams was accompanied on his travels through the Mississippi Delta by a young Muddy Waters. He later became a regular on the concert and coffeehouse circuits, touring Europe and Japan and performed at major U.S. music festivals.

On October 16, 1953 "The Things That I Used to Do" was recorded by Guitar Slim in New Orleans, where the young Ray Charles arranged and produced the session. It was released as a single in 1953 and became a bestseller the following year. First released to only to a Southern U.S. rural audience, urban R&B radio stations in the North began airing the song and built it into a national hit. The single stayed on the Billboard's Rhythm and Blues Records charts for 42 weeks. As a result, Guitar Slim became in great demand as a performer and played at venues such as the Apollo Theater in New York City.

Mississippi hill country blues guitar player and singer Jessie Mae Hemphill was born October 18, 1923. Hemphill was born near Como, Mississippi, in the northern Mississippi hill country, just east of the Mississippi Delta. She began playing the guitar at the age of seven. Aside from sitting in at Memphis bars a few times in the 1950s, most of her playing was done in family and informal settings, such as picnics with fife-and-drum music, until she was recorded in 1979.

Detroit blues, boogie-woogie and jazz piano player Boogie Woogie Red was born October 18, 1925. He was born Vernon Harrison in Rayville, Louisiana, and moved to Detroit in 1927. In his teen years, he began performing in local clubs and under the influence of local musicians Big Maceo and Dr. Clayton, Red taught himself piano, developing his keyboard style. When he was 18, he was drawn to the blues scene in Chicago, where he jammed with Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, and Memphis Slim. at different times he worked with Sonny Boy Williamson I, Washboard Willie, Baby Boy Warren, and John Lee Hooker.

Chuck Berry was born October 18, 1926! Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll. Born into a middle-class family in St. Louis, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came in Chicago when Muddy Waters put him in contact with Chess Records.

Chicago blues artist Johnny Temple was born October 18, 1906 in Canton, Mississippi. He was most active in the 30s and 40s. He learned to play guitar and mandolin as a child and in his teen years began playing house parties. While in Jackson, Mississippi he became friends with Skip James. He moved to Chicago in the early 1930s and started playing with Joe McCoy in the burgeoning Chicago blues scene.

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 new episode next week and we’ll talk about R&B guitar legend Steve Cropper and Chicago blues guitarist “Jimmy” Dawkins. It’s going to be an awesome show – we’ll see you then!