A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom.

Tokyo’s reverent “black music” fandom.

The second richest musician in the world, behind Paul McCartney, is James Dolan, owner of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, whose band JD & The Straight Shot toured opening for Jewel behind an album that sold 113 copies.

At 76, Atlanta’s Beverly “Guitar” Watkins still lives for the blues.

On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and vanished without a trace.

“There was no Delta blues before there were cheap, readily available steel-string guitars. And those guitars, which transformed American culture, were brought to the boondocks by Sears, Roebuck & Co.”

Another look at a popular myth.

For the longest time blues fans didn’t even know what their hero looked like—in 1971, a music magazine even hired a forensic artist to make a composite sketch based on various first-hand accounts—until two photos of Robert Johnson finally came to light.  The dapper young man pictured in the most famous photo, dressed in a stylish suit and smiling affably at the camera, hardly looks like a man who has sold his soul to Lucifer.

On the mysterious life story of blues icon Blind Willie Johnson and a half-century of attempts to fill in the blanks.