"Visions of the Blues" Southern Music issue! Across the 160-page magazine and 23-song CD compilation, we’re celebrating one of the South’s greatest cultural exports: blues music.
 
Visions of the Blues
Notes on the songs, including 
Banning Eyre on Bassekou Kouyaté 
Greil Marcus on John Lee Hooker 
Ann Powers on Alabama Shakes
Points South
Play Me Down Home, by Rashod Ollison
Gayle Wald digs the living blues of Rhiannon Giddens 
Jay Jennings searches for Robert Palmer
Picking Up the Piedmont Blues, by Benjamin Hedin
Elijah Wald remembers Bob Dylan’s forgotten album
Sip Slow, a story by Regina N. Bradley
That Winsome Moan, by Ian S. Port 
Cynthia Shearer listens to Big Mama
Unearthly Laments, by Christopher C. King 
Sarah Bryan on the eccentric songster of Elm City
How Prince freed Crystal Wilkinson
David Ramsey bears witness to CeDell Davis
That Look in His Eyes at 4:05, by Nathan Salsburg
Features
LISTENING FOR THE COUNTRY
The shape of Daddy’s hurt
by Zandria F. Robinson
BABY BOY BORN BIRTHPLACE BLUES
A hometown history
by John Jeremiah Sullivan
SWEET BITTER BLUES
Encounters in Tokyo 
by Amanda Petrusich 
MIGHTY TIGHT WOMAN
Forty-five years after her debut, Bonnie Raitt still sings where she stands
by Jewly Hight
SEE MY FACE FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Freedom is a blueswoman’s prerogative
by Daphne A. Brooks
HEADS
a story by Jeffery Renard Allen
Poetry
The Blues
by Nikki Giovanni
Peaches
by Alicia Ostriker
When Lucille Bogan Sings “Shave ’Em Dry”
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Making Love to Buddy Guy
by Patricia Smith
Art by Chris Sikich, Deborah Feingold, Lawrence N. Shustak, Joseph Desler Costa, Michael Abramson, Magdalena Solé, David Katzenstein, Danielle Osfalg, Augusta Palmer, Hongsun Yoon, Tim Duffy, Abetz & Drescher, Fahamu Pecou, Steve Miller, Cathey Miller, Carolyn Carr, Louviere + Vanessa, Danny McLean, Allen Beaulieu, Matt White, Hiraki Sawa, David Driskell, Eleanor Davis, Art Streiber, Delita Martin, Kelsey Dake