The Blues
Story Stream
Imani Perry’s Blue Notes February 06, 2025
The story goes that the lyrics to “Black and Blue,” the jazz standard popularized by Louis Armstrong, were written at gunpoint. ...
Symptomatic Reading February 05, 2025
YOU CAN HEAR the subway rumbling under the psych ward. I’m not sure which train; the hospital’s around 33rd Street and 1st, so it must be near the water. Smoke curls up from a large vat across the courtyard, luminous in the blue night. The hospital r...
Joseph Sings the Blues January 01, 2024
Albert Murray was an icon in the music industry. Though not a musician himself, he was a Black author whose writings shaped the genres of jazz and the blues. Between 1970 and 2005, he wrote a dozen books, including The Hero and the Blues (1973), Stom...
