The year the blues was written down

The window. Everything here was published between 12 November 2025 and 12 November 2026. Issue dates follow the publisher: a magazine dated July/August 2026 is listed under that date, not the day its website went up.

How each entry was checked. Every link was opened on 12 November 2026 and the headline, byline and date read off the page itself. Journal articles were checked against their DOI records in Crossref, which is also where two publication dates on this page were corrected. One address supplied by research turned out to be mistyped and returned no page; the correct one was found and used. Where a page sat behind a bot check, the item stayed only because its DOI record independently confirmed the title, authors and issue.

What is deliberately not here. The fifth edition of Blues and Gospel Recordings, the standard discography by Godrich and Dixon revised by Howard Rye and Chris Smith, is the publishing event of the year for anyone who works with 78s — but it ships on 16 November 2026, four days outside the window, so it waits for next year’s list. The 2026 Living Blues Awards results are also absent: the digital edition carrying them could not be read, so the winners could not be stated with confidence. Nothing is listed from Mojo, The Wire, Pitchfork, Harper’s or The New Yorker, not because they wrote nothing but because no blues-specific piece from those titles could be opened and confirmed in the window.

Not a bibliography. This is thirty-five pieces a reader can actually reach, not a complete index of the year’s blues writing. Paywalls and geography decide what a page like this can verify, and a magazine that keeps its archive offline keeps itself out of the list. Four entries are paywalled and marked as such; the rest are free or metered.

Why one entry is label copy. The Buddy Reed single announcement is a press release, not journalism, and it is labelled as one: the claims about the record are LaHooty Records’ own. It is here because a release date is part of the year’s record, and because the distinction between what a label says and what a reporter found out is worth keeping visible.

Corrections. If a link has rotted, a date is wrong, or a piece of the year’s writing is missing that should be here, tell the archive. Links are re-checked when the page is revised.