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Living Blues #286 features multi-instrumentalist Ben Harper. Harper absorbed the wide-reaching influence of the world of music throughout his life. Over his 30-year career he has taken these influences, melded them with his first love, the blues, and produced his own deeply personal sound. 38-year-old Florida-based blues player Selwyn Birchwood is one of the hottest emerging artists in the blues today. We sit down with him and discuss his road to the blues and his eye on the future. Alabama bluesman Lil’ Jimmy Reed has been belting out his take on blues legend Jimmy Reed’s sound for most of his 85 years. When not playing at juke joints around his South Alabama home of Enterprise, he is an overseas favorite. 2023 International Blues Challenge winner Mathias Lattin is just 20 years old but his jazz-infused guitar prowess is impressing people far and wide. This issue’s Let It Roll focusses on the Georgia Cotton Pickers. In late 1930, three of Georgia’s best bluesmen gathered in the studio and recorded for Columbia Records as the Georgia Cotton Pickers. The trio of Curley Weaver on six-string guitar, Barbecue Bob on twelve-string playing slide, and Buddy Moss on harmonica laid down just four numbers but what a hot quartet of sides they are. All of this plus Breaking Out with Greg Sover, the latest in Blues News, and over 50 record and book reviews.