In Living Blues #188
January 2007

Dear Friends, Welcome to a new year, and one that I hope will be better for the blues than 2006. In the last few months, we’ve lost so many of our most belov...

In Living Blues #187
November 2006

Dear Friends, The record business is shrinking incredibly quickly, and blues recording is suffering. You’ve all read about falling CD sales over the last few...

IN LIVING BLUES #185
JULY 2006

Dear Friends, As I told you last time, we’re ending what I believe is the hardestbusiness year ever for blues record labels. Hopefully, next year, Alligator...

IN LIVING BLUES #181
November 2005

Dear Friends, Today I spent remastering some of the best tracks from the seven Alligator albums by Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women. A Saffire collection, s...

IN LIVING BLUES #168
July 2003

Dear Friends, I’m glad to see that, in the midst of a very scary world situation, blues fans are still planning for happier events down the road. Our artis...

IN LIVING BLUES #165
September 2002

Dear Friends, This is the hottest summer I can remember and we’re preparing two September releases calculated to keep the heat turned up. As you know, Dr. J...

IN LIVING BLUES #157
May 2001

Dear Friends, It seems like there’s never a relaxed moment at Alligator. We’ve been scrambling to manufacture enough CDs to react to the demand for our new...

IN LIVING BLUES #156
March 2001

Dear Friends, As we move into Alligator’s 30th year of recording the blues, I have very little time to reflect on the past. As has been true since 1971, I’...

IN LIVING BLUES #155
January 2001

Dear Friends, I’m writing this as I fly home from Memphis; we just finished the mixes for Michael Burks’ debut album (not yet entitled) at Ardent Studios. ...

IN LIVING BLUES #154
November 2000

Dear Friends, I can’t tell you how thrilled we are with the initial reaction to Shemekia Copeland’s new album, Wicked. Between the radio play for “It’s 2 A...