Blues Moments in Time - January 8: Battlefields, Birthdays, and the Blues Beneath It All

In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, January 8 becomes a crossroads where battlefields, politics, and backbeats all meet. We start with the Battle of New Orleans and trace how a 19th‑century skirmish turned into the fiddle tune “The 8th of January” and, eventually, the hit “The Battle of New Orleans”—a piece of southern storytelling cut from the same cloth as the blues, capturing place, pride, and memory in melody.

From there, we move to 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” declaration, a moment when the nation finally named the conditions that shaped the very communities who are the blues. We explore how the amplified, weary blues of the 1960s carried the tension between promise and betrayal, federal investment and ongoing displacement, hope and hard reality.

January 8 is also a musical birthday roll call: Tampa Red, “The Guitar Wizard” who helped define Chicago blues guitar; Elvis Presley, the rockabilly lightning rod who carried blues structures to a global stage while raising hard questions about credit and compensation; and Shirley Bassey, whose dramatic, orchestral pop still bears the unmistakable imprint of blues feeling.

And in the relative quiet of recorded deaths on this date, we sit with what’s missing—the unmarked graves, unknown dates, and lost stories of countless blues artists. January 8 reminds us that the blues is a river fed by remembered legends and forgotten lives alike, all flowing into the music we hear today.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.