|
|
∠
When Howlin’ Wolf [1910-1976] made his trademark entrance the audience went wild. He took the stage crawling on all tours, a fierce Black animal, loosing the ferocious howl that gave him his name. The energy level was enormous, a combination of excitement, fear and fascination that thrilled deep.
[…]
¤ Son Seals [1942-2004] Seals’ debut album, The Son Seals Blues Band, established him as a groundbreaking new blues artist. His 1977 album, Midnight Son, was his true breakthrough. The album received widespread acclaim from every major music publication. Rolling Stone called it «one of the most significant blues albums of the decade.»
A strong series of six more […]
♦ FREDDIE KING [1934-1976]
Although Freddie King, “The Texas Cannonball”, was born and raised in Texas, he matured as a musician in Chicago. His guitar style combined country and urban influences. As a child, King grew up on the music of such legendary country blues guitarists as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, […]
♥ Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues ↓ [Ida Cox]
I hear these women raving ‘bout their monkey men About their trifling husbands and their no good friends These poor women sit around all day and moan Wondering why their wandering papas don’t come home But wild women don’t worry, wild women don’t […]
¤ Harmonica Blues → http://www.bluesharp.ca/legends/ ← ¤ Sonny Boy Williamson [1912-1965]
Why Alex ‘Rice’ Miller took the name Sonny Boy Williamson is a mystery. John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson had already made a name for himself in the early 40s as a harp master and blues idol, only to be murdered in 1948. Miller adopted the […]
¤ Jimmy Reed [1925-1976]
No other bluesman has ever experienced the success that came to Jimmy Reed from 1953 to 1966, 14 of his singles hit Billboard’s R&B Top 20. Even more impressive, 12 of these recordings “crossed over” to the Billboard POP 100, demonstrating the breath of his appeal to both black […]
¤ Otis Rush was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on April 29, 1934. As a youngster, Otis Rush taught himself to play harmonica and guitar. Otis Rush is left-handed and as many other left-handed blues guitarists, he plays a right-handed guitar upside down and left-handed. He worked with his mother and […]
¤ Elmore James
[1918-1963]
When the lick “Dust My Blues”, an electrified reinvention of Robert Johnson’s venerable “Dust My Broom”, hit vinyl in 1952, the blues would never be tha same again. Elmore James had taken the deep, dark, acoustic blues of the Delta and turned on the electric power: […]
Dixon first ran away from home when he was eleven. As he recalled in his autobiography, I Am the Blues, “I ran out in the country to a place 11 miles from home called Bovine, Mississippi…. It was nothing like I expected–man, you’re talking about a shack…. I thought our house was […]
Sam ‘Lightnin’ Hopkins [1912-1982] was known as “the Godfather of Texas Blues.” As a songwriter and storyteller, he was both prolific and original. As a gutarist and lyricist, he had the uncanny ability to improvise words and music simultaneously. As a poet and performer, Hopkins is remembered as one of blues most accomplished […]
¤ Lee Dorsey [1924-1986]
Lee Dorsey epitomized the loose, easygoing charm of New Orleans R&B perhaps more than any other artist of the ’60s. Working with legendary Crescent City producer/writer Allen Toussaint, Dorsey typically offered good-time party tunes with a playful sense of humor and a loping, funky backbeat.
∇ ‘Working […]
Effervescent saxophonist Louis Jordan was one of the chief architects and prime progenitors of the R&B idiom. His pioneering use of jumping shuffle rhythms in a small combo context was copied far and wide during the 1940s . . . A heart attack silenced this visionary in 1975, but not before he acted […]
|
|
