The Crossroads: 10 Blues Albums That Tell the American Story

The blues is the bedrock beneath everything — rock and roll, soul, jazz, country, hip-hop: they all draw from the same well of African American musical tradition that runs from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago's electrified South Side. These ten albums trace that story from its origins in Robert Johnson's acoustic rawness to the amplified urban heat of Muddy Waters and B.B. King, to the British invasion that brought the blues back to American audiences who had briefly forgotten where their music came from.