It was just Thomas Dolby, his keyboard and a synthesizer, at the House of Blues Thursday night, and that’s all the crowd needed.

Elements of the blues traveled to America with enslaved people from Africa, and reached full flower in the Mississippi Delta.

Forbidden from playing music, a young Elizabeth Cotten — born in 1893 in what is now part of Carrboro — secretly borrowed her brother’s banjo and guitar. She flipped the instruments upside down to ...

"I think the blues will always be around. People need it," guitar legend Johnny Winter famously said. And his words couldn't be more true than in Mississippi. Blues music has been passed down through ...