James Cotton, a Grammy Award-winning blues harmonica master whose full-throated sound backed such blues legends as Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Howlin' Wolf, has died at age 81. A ...

In the mid-1800s, a German harmonica manufacturer named Hohner started exporting his product to North America. Being relatively inexpensive, relatively easy to play and extremely portable, the ...

Hear Brandon Bailey perform two songs live in the NPR studio. The harmonica is a staple of American blues, beginning with the Memphis jug bands of the 1920s. In the 1960s, blues-influenced artists ...

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Sugar Blue plays the harmonica with the ferocity of a twister tearing up homes and trees as it levels the land. The little tin toy that you can barely see between his big mitts alternately has the ...

The harmonica is one of the easiest instruments to learn, but mastering it to a level approaching players like Toots Thielemans and Sugar Blue and can take many years. You may have seen blues players ...

Harmonicas were commonly called “French harps” or “mouth organs” and mountain men played them superbly. Some still do, though such old-fashioned music is not nearly as common as it was before and ...