MickeyV | All About Blues Music

BIG MAYBELLE

Big Maybelle lived her life at double speed, packing an awful lot of living into a few years. A big voice, with a big personality and a big woman all round, Maybelle had dozens of R&B chart hits and some successful crossover singles in the 50s, and made the charts as late as 1967, but…

REV. GARY DAVIS

The Folk/Blues revival of the 50s brought many original Blues players to prominence, from old field hands like Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James, to mad characters like Furry Lewis and hidden treasures like Libba Cotten, but perhaps the most influential of all was Rev. Gary Davis. This gruff old ‘guitar evangelist’ had a fantastic…

J B LENOIR

J B Lenior was a uniquely talented musician. Born in Mississippi and surrounded by the Blues from an early age, he often used African polyrhythms which he would beat out on the sound-box of his guitar as he played his delicate Blues. His high, sweet voice and his taste in stage costume might have made…

HOP WILSON

Lap-steel guitar player Hop Wilson was Texas born and bred, and almost unknown outside his home state, but through his influence on Johnny Winter and Jimmie Vaughan, his sound still echoes today. Ronnie Wood is another fan of Hop’s guitar licks, because Hop could also play a mean slide on a conventional guitar. A contemporary…

J B HUTTO

The distorted slide-guitar of Elmore James electrified Chicago in the early 50s, and the effects were heard down the years in the work of a generation of players who followed him, most notably ‘Hound Dog’ Taylor and JB Hutto. Arrayed in bright suits and hats and using a 50-foot guitar lead, JB’s wild and exuberant…

OTIS SPANN

Otis Spann is renowned as Muddy Waters‘ pianist throughout his Classic period of electric Chicago Blues, and a member of the Chess house-band that backed a roster of their big selling artists. He did rather more than that, as he showed off his great Blues voice on a series of fine albums in a solo…

JOHNNY SHINES

Johnny Shines was not a big Blues star, but he carried the flame lit by his friend Robert Johnson and passed it on to new generations. Johnny’s songs were inspired by Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins and others but he had an energetic guitar style of his very own and a rich, explosive voice that could easily…

WILLIE MABON

In the early 50s, Willie Mabon was at the forefront of the Chicago blues scene, with massive hit records on the Chess label. After a quiet spell, his career was revitalised in the 70s, when he discovered a new audience across the pond. Although he is not well remembered today, there was a time when…

CHRIS BARBER

Nobody did more to introduce the Blues into Europe than Chris Barber, bringing over American stars in the 50s to play with his band and going on to inspire the young men who started the British Blues Boom. Chris saw no meaningful barrier between Jazz and Blues players as he rated the qualities of musicianship…

JOHNNY LITTLEJOHN

Johnny Littlejohn was a Delta-born slide-guitar player whose style had much in common with Elmore James, but despite a long career on the Chicago club scene, and travelling the world as a side-man, he remained almost undiscovered outside his adopted hometown. Johnny Funchess was born in Lake MS in 1931 and Henry Martin, a friend…