Nothing But The Blues

Nothing But The Blues is a long-running blues programme with a clear promise and very little fuss. It plays the records. The hour is assembled like a working shelf of blues history, where early recordings, Chess sides, live albums, recent releases, and overlooked catalogue tracks all get their turn. Recent episodes place Henry Thomas, Little Esther Phillips, Howlin' Wolf, Cab Calloway, John Hammond, and Roy Bookbinder beside contemporary or newer-featured artists such as Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, Curtis Salgado, Studebaker John and his Maxwell Street Kings, Ron D. Bowes, Chino Swing Slide, and Big Creek Slim. The show has a strong memory. It notes when someone is making a debut, when an artist has not been played for years, when a track comes from a new album, and when an older recording came from a particular label or session. The commentary is brief, but it carries useful detail. Songs are often grouped by a shared idea, and those ideas can be playful or plain: Chicago travel, fathers and sons, water, Bob Dylan covers, cost of living, hard work, whiskey, trains, or the blues as daily weather. One run can move from a 1924 side to a 2024 album without treating either as a museum piece. That range is the point. The show hears blues as a living form, full of debt collectors, broken hearts, tough humor, old roads, church shadows, job trouble, and late-night barroom grit. It also pauses for losses in the blues world, with recent tributes to Roy Bookbinder and John Hammond. The presentation stays understated. There are no long interviews in the excerpts, no heavy framing, and no attempt to turn the music into a lecture. The value is in the sequence. For listeners who want album names, recording dates, deep cuts, and new discoveries alongside familiar blues pillars, Nothing But The Blues offers a reliable hour of informed selection.