“Write this down: Blow 3, blow 4, draw 3, blow 3,” Phil Kaplan said to his new class of Newton harmonica students. Kaplan told the class he pulled the riff from “Mannish Boy,” the popular 1955 Muddy ...

LISTENING to Larry Adler playing the harmonica at Café Society Uptown the other night made me realize again that if a man can play any instrument, from a grand piano to a musical saw, skillfully ...

It’s as if, his mother says, “some old bluesman got ahold of him and took him away.” That would explain everything — the school problems, the lawyers, court and jail. It would also explain how that ...