Bluesman | All About Blues Music

WILBERT HARRISON

When Wilbert Harrison left the Navy in 1950, he played calypso guitar and his first recordings for Rockin’ Records had a decidedly country feel. His switch to the Savoy label in 1954 did not bring any hits, but that situation changed in 1959 when his version of Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Kansas City’ was a big…

ROSIE LEDET

When the pretty 16-year-old Mary Rozella Bellard went to a dance in Lawtell, Louisiana to see Boozoo Chavis perform, it changed her life big-time. She was blown away by the good-rockin’ Zydeco music and was inspired to learn how to play accordion. That night she also met her husband Morris Ledet, who went on to…

WALTER DAVIS

Mississippi born Walter was a young self-taught pianist when he set out for St.Louis in the mid-20s, but he fitted right in to the scene that had Peetie Wheatstraw or Roosevelt Sykes playing most nights. Heavily influenced by Leroy Carr and possessed of a mournful vocal tone, Walter cut his first record ‘M&O Blues’ was…

JO ANN KELLY

Like Memphis Minnie before her, Jo Ann Kelly was the genuine article: a woman who could play the Blues as hard and deep as any man. Her rich, strong voice and authentic acoustic slide guitar work made her a big attraction on the British folk/blues circuit. Usually playing alone and sometimes singing ‘a capella’, she…

SAM COLLINS

Sam was an early Mississippi slide-guitar player who used the fluid qualities of his bottleneck technique, rather than the dramatic, slashing style preferred by some of this contemporaries, to emphasise his light, clear vocal delivery. Born in Louisiana but brought up across the MS state line in Bo Diddley‘s home-town of McComb, he began his…

DOROTHY MOORE

‘Misty Blue’ was a big cross-over hit for Dorothy in 1976, as the perfect vehicle for her Southern flavoured soul-blues voice. Born in Jackson MS, the daughter of Mississippi Blind Boys’ Melvin Hendrex, Dorothy began singing in Gospel choirs, eventually emerging as a soloist. As a student at Jackson State University she formed a girl-group…

PINK ANDERSON

Back at the start of the 20th Century, when the original Blues music was born out of the hard life of rural African-American workers, travelling shows, circuses, tent-show revues and ‘medicine shows’ were a common sight in the South. They all had musicians as part of their entertainment, and these ‘wandering songsters’ spread the new…

IVORY JOE HUNTER

Ivory Joe Hunter (his full given name) was playing piano and developing his velvet voice around Beaumont Texas when he was recorded as a teenager for the Library of Congress in 1933. When he moved to Oakland CA. in 1942, he set up his own Ivory Records and his ‘Blues at Sunrise’ was a national…

RICE MILLER, SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON II

The man we know as ‘Sonny Boy Williamson II’, or Rice Miller, was born somewhere in Mississippi in 1899 (or 1897, or 1910 although newer sources say 1912) and his real name was Aleck (or Willie) Miller (or possibly Ford). Deception came easily to this man, so stories he told about his own past cannot…

SCRAPPER BLACKWELL

Scrapper Blackwell was one of the early Blues guitarists whose jazz-based, single-note style was to prove hugely influential. Like his contemporary Lonnie Johnson, Scrapper’s powerful phrasing on his acoustic guitar showed the way for later electric blues guitarists to express themselves. He also wrote some classic Blues tunes and, with his piano-playing partner Leroy Carr,…