Mance Lipscomb represented one of the last remnants of the nineteenth-century songster tradition, which predated the development of the blues. Though songsters might incorporate blues into their ...

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Mance Lipscomb. If that’s the case, it’s probably because he hasn’t set foot on a stage in almost 50 years—the prolific blues guitarist was born in 1895 and was only ...

His fingers worked the strings of his guitar with the fluid ease of a stream coursing over pebbles. His voice was worn, comfortable and sturdy like an old work shirt. Still, dynamic action was ...

These were Black men often tracked down by record collectors and music historians like Alan Lomax and Dick Waterman who had been active as live performers and recording artists from the late ‘20s ...

The Navasota Blues Fest continues to celebrate the great Navasotan bluesman Mance Lipscomb by kicking off its 17th annual event on Aug. 9. Since 1996, the Navasota Blues Fest has brought together ...

Mance Lipscomb never got rich from playing the music he loved - at least not in the way most of us think. But he was rich in the satisfaction of remaining true to himself and to the audiences he ...

NPR's Scott Detrow talks to Smithsonian curator John Troutman and blues musician Dom Flemons about a new folk album, Playing for the Man at the Door, from late chronicler Mack McCormick's collection.

The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives is like a portal—to other countries, to the minds of great artists, and to specific moments in time. In March, in celebration of Women’s History Month and the ...

In the course of five decades and dozens of films, the documentary filmmaker Les Blank redefined the core of Americana to include Black, indigenous, and immigrant cultures and artists—as in “A Well ...

We're going to remember a record producer who played an outsized role in documenting and preserving American roots music. The musicologist Chris Strachwitz has died. MANCE LIPSCOMB: (Singing) Sugar ...

Brilliant, complicated, dogged, difficult and motivated by things grander than money, Robert “Mack” McCormick died in 2015 leaving behind a trove of research that historians treated as Indiana Jones ...