Until 1992 the award was known as Best Traditional Blues Performance and was twice awarded to individual tracks rather than albums.
The award was discontinued after the 2011 Grammy season in a major overhaul of Grammy categories.
From 2012 onwards, the category was merged with the Best Contemporary Blues Album category to form the new Best Blues Album category.
However, in 2016 the Grammy organisation decided to revert the situation back to the pre-2012 era, with two separate categories for traditional and contemporary blues recordings respectively.
King holds the record of most wins in the category with ten.