Fat, brassy sounds fill Cafe Van Kleef in downtown Oakland as Mark Hummel blows a slow Muddy Waters blues into his amplified B-flat Hohner harmonica. An off-white Dobbs shantung Panama hat rests on ...

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 ...

Black-Eyed Sally’s is once again bringing back the popular “Northeast Blues Harmonica Showcase” on Saturday — a gathering of regional and national blues harmonica talent. Headlining will be harmonica ...

One of my favorite things to play is a slow blues song, which is something I include in every performance. Each time, without really thinking much about it, I’m faced with two questions: 1) How does ...

Brody Buster performs as a one-man band before a Royals game at Kauffman Stadium in June. It's been twenty years since Brody Buster's first round of glory days — when he was a 10-year-old blues ...

Months after his aphasia diagnosis, Bruce Willis found good company in a harmonica and musician Derek Richard Thomas. On Monday, wife Emma Heming Willis shared an Instagram video of the “Die Hard” ...

Among the harmonica’s many wonderful and unique traits, there is this: You have to really suck to be good at it. As one of America’s finest and busiest harmonica players, Denver’s Ronnie Shellist ...

Mississippi blues harp player James Cotton was certainly considered lucky for the break he got joining Muddy Waters’ band in the late 1950s, taking over a spot previously held by such venerated ...

NPR's Scott Simon spoke to James Cotton in 2013. Hear an encore of their conversation at the audio link. James Cotton, one of the foremost blues harmonica players of the 20th century, died Thursday of ...

Blues harmonica virtuoso and onetime Muddy Waters sideman James Cotton died on Thursday at a medical center in Austin of pneumonia. He was 81. A rep for the musician confirmed his death. Cotton, who ...