MickeyV | All About Blues Music

TEXAS ALEXANDER

Most Blues singers play guitar, harp, piano or some other instrument, but Texas Alexander’s powerful tenor voice was the only thing he needed to knock you sideways with his primitive Blues. Singing in the street or standing on the back of a wagon at a party or fish-fry, maybe backed by a guitarist, he would…

FRANK STOKES

Some Pioneers of the Blues are honoured and remembered, and some slip into obscurity, and it’s a shame that Frank Stokes has become one of the latter. He grew up playing the Blues before WWI, when it was just an obscure local folk music from the north of the Mississippi Delta, and his tremendous voice…

ROY BROWN

There is an on-going debate about the origins of Rock’n’Roll, but there is little doubt that it sounded very much like the R&B that Roy Brown was producing in New Orleans around 1950. His powerful, emotional Gospel style vocals, with melismatic swoops, shrieks and bellowing choruses, influenced the singing of generations of Rockers and Bluesmen…

LEFTY DIZZ

The History of the Blues is littered with wild characters like Charley Patton, Little Walter and Guitar Slim, but Lefty Dizz was one of the wildest, despite being little known outside Chicago. A fixture on the club scene from the mid-60s until the early 90s, Lefty and his band Shock Treatment pulled every trick in…

NICKY HOPKINS

Best known for his work with The Rolling Stones, Nicky Hopkins’ Blues-soaked piano figures also featured on the work of The Jeff Beck Group, The Who, The Steve Miller Band, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and a host of others. Nicky’s on-going health issues made it extremely difficult for him to commit to the punishing…

ART RUPE

Specialty Records was one of the independent labels that made the West coast a new and fast-growing source of Blues music after WWII. Owner Art Rupe was an extremely ‘hands on’ in running the company, discovering artists and repertoire, producing records, supervising the pressing plant and setting up his own national distribution network. After a…

AL ‘Blind Owl’ WILSON

Al Wilson played harp and guitar for the great white American Blues band, Canned Heat, from it’s formation in 1965 to his untimely death in 1970. As an instrumentalist, singer and lyricist, he was a cornerstone of the band; as a student of the Blues, he was a respected researcher who was part of a…

EDITH WILSON

Edith Wilson was one of the early ‘Divas’ who recorded Blues songs for the newly discovered ‘race market‘ in the early 20s. She had quite a few hit records and went on to find fame in the entertainment industry as a singer on stage and in nightclubs. She toured widely with her comedy revues, sang…

VAN MORRISON

‘Van the Man’ is a unique performer who crosses a lot of boundaries with his brand of ‘Celtic Soul’. Elements of Gospel, Folk and Blues are fused behind a vocal style that also draws heavily on wildly emotional Jazz phrasing. He revealed that he learned a lasting lesson from studying many early Louis Armstrong records,…

BREWER PHILLIPS

Brewer Phillips is best remembered as a driving force behind Hound Dog Taylor’s Houserockers. Alongside his loud long-time drumming partner Ted Harvey, Brewer would keep a bass-line pounding on his guitar using a thumb-pick, while using his fingers to strum the heavy juke-joint boogies of his native Mississippi hill country. This potent rhythm section allowed…