DATC: Gary, tell us what Document Records is and what makes it special?

Gary: It is rather unique! I was a CD reviewer when I first encountered it. From the 1970s onwards there were labels that were reissuing pre-war country blues. Artists’ works…

Maria Muldaur is probably best known for her 1974 hitMidnight at the Oasis, but she has had a long and outstanding career over 40 years. During that time, she’s released around 40 albums covering almost every kind of American roots music. But primarily Maria is…

The blues has had an uneasy tension with the church. For many God-fearing people in the deep South, blues music was difficult to reconcile with a church-going lifestyle, because of its association with the juke…

Robert Johnson is an almost mythical figure in the history of the blues. The chronology of his life is somewhat hazy – we are unsure even of when he was born but it was probably around 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. The circumstances of his death have been much discussed, along with the question of where he was buried, but it is likely he was murdered in 1938  – poisoned – by the jealous husband of a woman Johnson had taken up with. We know the date of some of the recordings he…