On The Blues Is My Biography, Branch employs far-reaching roots to advance the blues process of observation, reportage, assertion, transcendence.
(Photo: Marc PoKempner)Aug 11, 2026 1:21 PM
Has the blues world changed very much — or not at all — in the 100-some years since the music was first recorded? In the 1920s bluesmen and women worked plantation parties,…
Sonny Rollins performing at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 1992
(Photo: Ronald Heard)May 26, 2026 11:21 AM
“Is this going to be another negative, punch-Sonny-Rollins-in-the-eye article for DownBeat?” the man asked with weary resignation as he plopped into a den chair. “Well, I agreed to do it. I know how it’s going to come out anyway. So, go ahead, ask me. I’m ready.”
It was a telephone interview. I imagined Sonny Rollins sitting there in his Hudson River Valley country home north of Rhinebeck, New York; sitting there in a nimbus of ennui waiting to be prodded and poked with an assortment of those unpleasant, blunt instruments we journalists…
