What’s the Latest Word in KC

Get Your Blues Cruise #38 Raffle Tickets NOW!
Attention All Blues Lovers/Cruise Lovers — they’re baaack! The Kansas City Blues Society (KCBS) is selling raffle tickets to the January 2023 Legendary Rhythm & Blues cruise. It sets sail from Ft. Lauderdale, FL to St. John, St. Maarten and Half Moon Cay (Bahamas Private Island) on January 28 – February 4, 2023.
Only 500 tickets will be sold! The winner will be drawn at the Thanksgiving Day Breakfast dance in November. You need not be present to win!
International Blues Challenge
Learn about the International Blues Challenge and download the entry forms!
Stone Cutters Union at Tunes and Tulips
Join us for Tunes and Tulips at Evergy Center in Topeka. Local favorite Howard Mahan will be featured! Come on out and support our IBC representative!
Genre Segregation and Communication
Danny Powell, President of the Heartland Song Network, has been holding Zoom meetings on the topic of Genre Segregation and Communication. The purpose is to …
New feature: Album Reviews
Album Review: Live at Efes Pilsen Blues Festival 1997 EP
A wayward collective themselves, of shifting experimental improvisationalists, this cd captures the band before they drifted into Turkish Underground Psyche Extravaganza and ended in 1998.
Album Review: Bringin’ In The Blues
Eight of the twelve songs are up-tempo rockers, two are mid-tempo, one is gospel and one is a slow blues waltz.
Album Review: Pickin’ Up Trash
Five songs, three by Tom, one by Dave and a cover of Stranger’s Blues. Longer than a single, shorter than an album.
Album Review: Bring It
This is Miss Bix’s second blues release. Keeshea Pratt, an IBC winner, joins in on Red Walls, a song about racial inequality.
Check out Yesterday’s Blues
- Buddy MossBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the May 1994 Blues News With the focus so often on the Mississippi Delta area as the “cradle of the blues,” other places where the blues were nurtured are sometimes slighted. One such place is Atlanta, Georgia. In …
- Johnny ShinesBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the FMarch 1994 Blues News Johnny Shines was a highly gifted guitar player and a literate and poetic composer of blues lyrics. He was, as well, one of our greatest bluesmen. However, through unfortunate circumstances, he never attained the …
- Professor LonghairBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the February 1994 Blues News In October of 1993, New Orleans premier music club, Tipitina’s, officially changed its name to Professor Longhair’s Tipitina to honor the legendary piano player, singer, and composer who made the club his home base …
- Speckled Red & the Dirty DozensBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the April 1994 Blues News “Playing at the Dozens” or “Putting in the Dozens” is a folk game in which two or more participants hurl insults and boasts at one another. These highly imaginative and metaphorical comments are …
- Willie Mae “Big Mama” ThorntonBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the February 1995 Blues News In 1952, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton recorded a robust and raunchy number with a lot of innuendo and double entendre about a fed-up female who is telling a no-account, libidinous sporting man …
- Walter “Furry” LewisBy Doyle M. Pace, originally published in the December 1990 Blues News Beale Street, for the first quarter of this century, was one of the roughest and toughest, most rocking and swinging, wide-open streets in the country. It was a close counterpart of Kansas City’s Eighteenth and …