Billy Branch turned 75 on October 3, and ten days later he sat down for a long conversation with Brant Buckley, published by American Blues Scene. I read it slowly, because few living players carry as much of Chicago harmonica as he does. And the talk goes beyond his latest record: Branch believes Chicago still owes the blues a museum that matches what the city did for the music.
Who Billy Branch is
Branch was born in 1951 in North Chicago and came into the blues through the front door. Willie Dixon found him while he was still in college, and he spent years on the road with the Chicago Blues All-Stars, first learning next to Carey Bell and then taking over the band’s harmonica chair. Junior Wells and James Cotton are also among the mentors he names. In 1977 he formed the Sons of Blues, who are still with him today. He has three Grammy nominations and is in the Blues Hall of Fame. I was lucky enough to share a stage with him, and up close you can feel how alive that lineage is in the way he plays.
What impresses me most, though, is the work offstage. His Blues in Schools program, which he has been running since 1978, has taken blues lessons to classrooms in Europe, Asia, Mexico and South America. For anyone who teaches harmonica, that counts as much as any record.
The record
The Blues Is My Biography came out in November 2025 as the first release on Chicago’s Rosa’s Lounge Records, produced by Larry Batiste. It has eleven songs, all written or co-written by Branch, with a horn section and background vocals right up front. Bobby Rush sings and plays harp on “Hole in Your Soul”, Shemekia Copeland joins him on “Begging for Change”, co-written with Ronnie Baker Brooks, who also plays guitar on it, and the set stretches to a hip hop flavored blues in “How You Living” and a reggae groove in “Ballad of the Million Men”. If you play, I’d start with “The Harmonica Man”, the most autobiographical song on the album. In the interview he says he is going after a Grammy nomination with this one.
The missing museum
The part that stayed with me was the museum. Branch points out that the city of Chess and Vee-Jay became the blues capital and fed the British Invasion, yet never got a major home for the music. He recalls an earlier project that had 40 to 50 million dollars available and died because nobody found a site. He doesn’t see ill will, just a city that got used to having the blues around. He calls the Mojo Museum, in Muddy Waters’ old house, a small and welcome step, and holds up Memphis as a city that knows how to show off its own music. His idea fits in one line: “When you land in Chicago, you should hear a blues band.”
I agree, and I think it applies to any city with a blues scene. A museum matters, but memory starts earlier, with people playing, teaching and telling the story of those who came first. Billy Branch has been doing all three for almost fifty years.
I’ll be going back to the album this week, starting with “The Harmonica Man”. And I was glad to see D.K. Harrell among the young players he recommends, along with Mathias Lattin. I know Harrell well: I’ve played with him more than once at the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival, with the Ale Ravanello Blues Combo and with Mari Kerber. It’s good to see a Chicago harp master betting on the same name.
— Ale Ravanello