JT Butler Music Blues Tiba

10/20/2026

🥊 “I grew up in boxing,I could and should have boxed. But I had a street fight when I was a boy,just 12 years old. It was with a man,one of those men that push kids around because they know they can’t push men around. He gave me a bad eye,my right eye.

I was blind in it for years but I made the man run and I chased him. I developed a cataract in the eye and finally I went to the doctor and he told me not to have the operation,that the eye would heal itself. He had a theory that the body would cure itself of anything of it could only survive long enough-even cancer!

In cancer,you see,the trouble is that the cancer kills the body before the body can kill the cancer. If you could live long enough the body would cure itself of cancer. Well,you know,he was right...

I did a little boxing,even with the bad eye,but you remember how they found out that Harry Greb had been fighting with a glass eye and the commissions began to give better physical examinations.

So I could never have been a real fighter. But I used to train at St.Nicks because in those days the arenas were used as gymnasiums,too. I was always a good hitter.”

Cus D’Amato

’Amato

10/10/2026

10/01/2026

10/01/2026

Remembering the blues legend Otis Rush (April 29, 1934 – September 29, 2018)
Rush perhaps wasn't as widely known as B.B. King or Albert King. But his guitar and vocal work had a huge impact on guitar legends including Buddy Guy, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn, who named his band after Rush's late 1950s hit "Double Trouble."

"The stuff I grew up on was all on the Cobra (Records), you know. You know 'Double Trouble' and 'I Can't Quit You, Baby,'" Clapton said after a 2014 interview. He said he puts Rush in the same category as other pioneering blues greats who shaped his own blues playing.

"At the time that I was growing up, there was a handful of people who'd made that kind of mark: Freddie King. Buddy Guy. B.B. King. Otis Rush. Magic Sam. So Otis: Fantastic. Great player," Clapton said.

Rush played left handed with his guitars strung with the low E string at the bottom and the high E on top. He'd sometimes put his little finger under the low E which helped him bend notes in ways few other blues men did.

"He got the sound that nobody else got," Clapton told NPR. "And there was something about that upside down style of playing like Stevie Ray has - or had. You can't do that if you're right handed. You can't make the guitar do the things that they were able to do. And Otis had that voice, too. I mean, just a powerful voice."

Source: NPR

(Photo by Jerome De Perlinghi)

09/30/2026

09/30/2026

09/30/2026

Remembering James Yancey Jones, better known to the world as Tail Dragger, who born on this day, back in 1940. (September 30, 1940.)

Born in Altheimer, Arkansas, James Yancey Jones grew up sneaking listens to the blues on his grandparents' battery-powered radio—frequently draining the batteries before Sunday church! After moving to Chicago in 1966, he worked as an auto mechanic by day while immersing himself in the city's blistering night-time music scene.

It didn't take long for him to catch the attention of his ultimate musical hero: Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf. Wolf took the young singer under his wing and anointed him with the legendary moniker "Tail Dragger" due to his notorious habit of showing up late to gigs.

With a deep, unpolished voice and a fierce old-school style, he became a fixture of the Chicago West Side blues scene through the 1970s and 1980s.

On July 11, 1993, in Chicago, Jones shot and killed the blues artist Boston Blackie, following a heated dispute over payment that began a month earlier when both performers appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival. Jones claimed he acted in self-defense, but was convicted of second-degree murder and was incarcerated for 17 months of a four-year prison sentence.

It took until 1996 before his debut album, Crawlin' Kingsnake, was issued by St. George Records. He was 56 years old when the record was released.

Trail Digger passed away on September 4, 2023, at age 82.

Raise a glass and spin a track for a true blues man today. 🍺

James Yancey Jones
September 30, 1940 – September 4, 2023

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09/29/2026

Robert Johnson remains one of the most influential figures in the history of modern music, despite leaving behind a recorded catalog of only 29 songs. Born in Mississippi in 1911, he became the definitive icon of the Delta blues, mastering a haunting vocal style and a brilliant guitar technique that made him sound like a full band playing at once.

His mythos is famously tied to the legend of the crossroads, where he supposedly traded his soul to the devil in exchange for unparalleled musical talent. (It shouldn’t be though. He deserves better.) This eerie narrative was only amplified by his raw, tortured lyrics in tracks like "Cross Road Blues" and "Hellhound on My Trail," as well as his likely murder in 1938 at the young age of 27.

Though he went largely unnoticed during his short life, Johnson’s music was rediscovered decades later, fundamentally reshaping the landscape of rock and roll. Titans of the 1960s British Invasion, including Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, idolized his work, cementing his legacy as the grandfather of rock and the ultimate blues poet.

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