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PODCAST

Blues Progressions

Karl Sorochinski

Blues Progressions: Where every note tells a story 🎵 Welcome to Blues Progressions, the podcast that delves deep into the heart and soul of one of the most influential genres in music history: the blues. I’m your host, Karl Sorochinski and together, we’ll embark on a rhythmic journey through time. So, whether you’re a seasoned blues aficionado or a curious listener, join us on Blues Progressions. Let’s groove, reflect, and celebrate the heartbeat of American music. 🎶🔵 Remember to subscribe,

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All Episodes

23:06

Episode 6 - Drums: The Groove that Moves It

Blues Progressions ·

2026/10/02

Clap on the two and the four — that push you just felt is the backbeat, the heartbeat of rock and roll.The finale: the instrument that turns a lonely blues into a whole band and decides if a room catches fire. The blues started without drums (solo Delta guitar + foot stomps); the drum kit is a 20th-century American invention out of New Orleans The jug-band percussion tradition; the humble hi-hat The backbeat (emphasis on 2 & 4) — rooted in African polyrhythm and gospel hand-claps — the

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23:09

Episode 5 - Bass Guitar: The Hidden Engine

Blues Progressions ·

2026/09/25

Drop your attention to the very bottom of a song — that low, round thing you feel in your chest more than you hear. Almost nobody notices it, and it's holding the whole song together. The hidden engine. The bass's unique job: the hinge between rhythm and harmony — root notes define the chords, the kick-lock ("the pocket") drives the groove Why bass is felt: the physics of low frequencies working on your body Where it came from: piano left hand, upright/washtub bass, rockabilly slap → Leo Fender's

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23:10

Episode 4 - Piano: Barrelhouse to Boogie

Blues Progressions ·

2026/09/18

One beat-up upright, one player, and a left hand rolling like a freight train — and suddenly one person is the whole band. The most underappreciated instrument in blues rock: the piano.The barrelhouse: rough sawmill/turpentine joints where one pianist was the entire band The two-hand division of labor: left hand = bass + drums, right hand = bluesy melody Boogie-woogie: the relentless rolling left-hand ostinato — a direct ancestor of the rock beat; Pinetop Smith; the 1938 Carnegie Hall "Spirituals

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23:17

Episode 3 - Harmonica: The Pocket Orchestra

Blues Progressions ·

2026/09/11

A few bucks, fits in your pocket, no strings or keys — and in the right hands, cupped around a mic, it moans like a sax and cuts through a whole band like a siren. The biggest small instrument in the blues.What a harmonica actually is: free reeds, the ten-hole diatonic, cheap Hohner Marine Band, the "Mississippi saxophone" The two magic tricks: bending (shaping the note inside your throat) and cross harp / second position Early voices: DeFord Bailey's train pieces, Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy

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23:12

Episode 2 - Electric Guitar: From Delta to Arena

Blues Progressions ·

2026/09/04

The problem amplification solved: guitar from background rhythm to lead voicePickups, sustain, grit — why an electric guitar is a new instrument, not a loud acoustic Charlie Christian invents the guitar solo; T-Bone Walker invents electric blues lead ("Stormy Monday") Muddy Waters' Delta muscle; jump blues; Chuck Berry as the blues→rock-and-roll hinge The solidbody revolution: Fender Telecaster/Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul The voice takes over: B.B. King's vibrato & Lucille, Albert King's

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23:13

Episode 1 - Slide Guitar: The Crying Voice

Blues Progressions ·

2026/08/28

There's a sound in the blues that doesn't play notes so much as it cries them. That's slide guitar — the instrument that sounds most like a human voice weeping and singing at once. We start the series here.Why slide sounds like a voice: gliding between pitches, no frets, the notes between the notes Delta roots: W.C. Handy's Tutwiler train-station encounter, the diddley bow, Hawaiian steel, resonator guitars, gospel slide Open tunings (open G/D/E) — how one bar of glass plays the whole 12-bar The

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25:45

Episode 6 - Blues Rock Now (Series Finale)

Blues Progressions ·

2026/08/21

The finale brings it home to right now. Joe Bonamassa as the model for the modern DIY blues-rock empire (and his Royal Albert Hall night with Clapton); Gary Clark Jr. fusing the blues with everything modern ("This Land"); Kingfish carrying it straight out of Clarksdale, mentored by Buddy Guy — the living, unbroken chain. The 2000s garage-blues wave (White Stripes, Black Keys) that snuck the blues back onto the radio; Marcus King at the blues/Southern-rock crossroads; Larkin Poe and Samantha Fish

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25:45

Episode 3 - Guitar Gods (Corrected Upload)

Blues Progressions ·

2026/08/15

The loudest, most virtuosic chapter. The power trio as an invention (Cream) that forces the guitar into godhood; the extended live jam traced straight back to call-and-response; "Crossroads" as a Robert Johnson song turned rocket; the Marshall-stack volume arms race; Clapton and Duane Allman's "Layla" crossing threads with the Southern Rock series. Then Hendrix — a chitlin'-circuit bluesman to the core, discovered by a Brit and flown to London, who used feedback and the studio as instruments, called

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25:35

Episode 5 - The Lean Years and the Revival

Blues Progressions ·

2026/08/14

The wilderness and the morning after. How disco, punk, new wave, and hair metal pushed blues rock to the margins (Muddy Waters died in '83; the industry called the blues a museum piece) — and how it survived underground in clubs, festivals (the Chicago Blues Festival launched in '84), and the hands of the faithful. Robert Cray and George Thorogood cracking the door; then the full revival: Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time," Gary Moore's "Still Got the Blues," Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker finally getting

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25:50

Texas and the American Answer

Blues Progressions ·

2026/08/07

The hinge of the series — the blues comes home to America, to Texas. The Lone Star blues bloodline (T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday," Lightnin' Hopkins, Freddie King); ZZ Top as a ferocious blues-rock power trio hiding inside MTV fame ("La Grange" off John Lee Hooker); the Austin scene at Antone's where young players learned from the masters in person. Then the centerpiece: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble — Number One, the heavy strings, Montreux and Bowie's "Let's Dance," "Texas Flood," his

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24:55

Episode 3 - Flags and Myths

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/31

Episode 4 is the legacy episode — the beautiful parts and the complicated parts both. How "classic rock" radio (AOR → tested song libraries c.1980) froze a handful of songs and shrank the genre to a postcard. The "Free Bird" meme and "Sweet Home Alabama" as shorthand. Then the hard center: the Confederate-flag controversy, handled through the host's honest first-person reckoning — wearing one at 12 as "rebel"/love-of-the-music, learning what it carries (the battle flag vs. the CSA flag, the

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26:05

S04E02 — The British Blues Boom

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/24

The fuse from Episode 1 catches. How a generation of British kids fell for American blues records and handed the music back louder: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated as the hub; the underground club scene (the Marquee, Eel Pie Island); the race-and-radio reason it took outsiders; the Rolling Stones as a Chess cover band; the Animals and Them; John Mayall's Bluesbreakers as the guitar-hero factory (Clapton, Green, Mick Taylor); the 1966 "Beano" album and the Les-Paul-into-cranked-Marshall tone that

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25:30

Episode 1 - Electric Church: What Blues Rock Really Is

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/17

The opener of a brand-new six-part series — with a warm welcome back to the Southern Rock (Southbound)crowd and an open door for newcomers. We define blues rock (the blues plus rock volume, drums, and attitude), then lay the foundation: the 12-bar form and the bent blue note; the Great Migration that carried the Delta to Chicago; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Chess Records; Little Walter electrifying the harmonica; T-Bone Walker making the guitar a lead voice in Texas; and the three

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0:30

Special Announcement - Coming July 17

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/10

Fresh on the heels of my series on Southern Rock, I am launching the next series on Blues Rock starting July 17!

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25:00

Episode 6 - Modern Sourthern Rock

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/10

A band like Blackberry Smoke or the Marcus King Band walks out to a sold-out room tonight — and you can’t quite name what it is. Southern Rock? Blues-rock? Country? Americana? All of it? The finale brings the whole story home: who carries it now, how it evolved, and how a porch sound went global.

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25:00

Episode 5 - Decline and Revival

Blues Progressions ·

2026/07/03

1980: Capricorn Records goes bankrupt and the press writes the obituary — Southern Rock is dead. They got it completely wrong. It didn’t die; it went underground, and the faithful kept the fire lit in the small rooms. The host was one of them — behind the board for a Jersey cover band.

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24:30

Episode 4 - Flags and Myths

Blues Progressions ·

2026/06/26

The same five Southern Rock songs play on every classic rock station, forever — but somebody chose them, and somebody froze this music in place. What got frozen along with it — the flags, the myths, the arguments — is the hardest, most honest episode in the series. And the host doesn’t dodge any of it, including his own history with the flag.

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25:21

Episode 3 - The 70s Explosion

Blues Progressions ·

2026/06/19

Everybody knows “Free Bird” — it’s a punchline now, the thing people yell as a joke. But that song, and a dozen like it, came out of one white-hotfive-year explosion of Southern music. This is the peak: Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels — and the fire that took some of the best of them.

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25:06

Episode 2 - Macon RIsing

Blues Progressions ·

2026/06/12

A grieving manager who’d just buried Otis Redding bets a whole record label on a band with two lead guitarists and two drummers. The town is Macon. The label is Capricorn. This is the room where Southern Rock got its name.

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25:11

Episode 1 - The Roots of Southern Rock

Blues Progressions ·

2026/06/06

Welcome back! After a long absence, I would like to welcome you back to Blues Progressions. With the help of AI, I am now able to keep up with work and my side projects. This is the first of a six parts series of the Sub-Genre: Southern Rock. As a long time fan I am thrilled to have it's histroy presented to you. Look for a weekly episode throughout this series!

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