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...
Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal August 01, 2023
For many years, those in the know in the tech world have known that “artificial intelligence” is a scam. It’s been true for so long in Silicon Valley that it was true before there even was a Silicon Valley. That’s not to say that AI hadn’t done impre...
Record Master Marshall Chess August 01, 2023
The Rolling Stones named themselves after a Muddy Waters song recorded at Chicago’s Chess Records, the eponymous label started by Leonard and Phil Chess. Leonard’s son Marshall was next in line, the heir apparent to a business famous for its roster o...
Delta Force August 01, 2023
Languages do not become simpler over time, but literature can. The more languages are used, the more elaborate their grammar and vocabulary become. The further a style develops, however, the greater the obviousness of its principles and effects becom...
