January 4th reads like a time‑lapse of the blues—how it was born in struggle, electrified onstage, commercialized in boardrooms, and woven into the DNA of global popular music. In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, Kelvin Huggins traces how a single winter date captures the journey of the blues from Southern folk expression to worldwide cultural force.
We start with the commercial and cultural shift marked by CBS buying the Fender Guitar Company in 1965—turning the Telecasters and Stratocasters that powered Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy from working musicians’ tools into corporate assets. From there, we jump to Hamburg’s Star Club, whose 1975 reopening reminds us how European venues became shrines to American R&B and blues, shaping bands like The Beatles before they helped launch the British Invasion.
Kelvin then digs into the political heartbeat of the blues—music born in the shadow of Jim Crow, Parchman Prison, and a legal system stacked against Black Americans. The blues emerges here as more than entertainment: it’s protest, testimony, and survival, the sound of a people insisting on being heard.
January 4th also proves to be a landmark recording day. We revisit a young Elvis Presley cutting a demo in 1954 that would help ignite rock and roll, then step into Chess Records in 1967, where Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Little Walter convene for a Super Blues session on the very same day The Doors unleash their dark, blues‑infused debut. Two years later, Fleetwood Mac make their own pilgrimage to Chess, recording with their Chicago heroes in a moment of deep respect and musical communion.
Along the way, we mark the births of Sonny Blake, an authentic Memphis blues voice, and John McLaughlin, a genre‑bending guitarist who carried the language of the blues into jazz fusion and beyond. And we pause to remember Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and Ray Thomas of The Moody Blues—artists whose rock legacies were rooted in blues feeling, storytelling, and grit.
January 4th, in the end, isn’t just a date on the calendar. It’s a snapshot of the blues’ full arc: from juke joints to global stages, from protest to profit, from the Delta to Hamburg and back again—proving once more that beneath so much of modern music, the blues is still beating.
Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins
Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective
Keep the blues alive.
© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.
