MickeyV | All About Blues Music

JAZZ GILLUM

While John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson was the undoubted King of the Chicago harp players in the 40s, Jazz Gillum was the big noise there many years before him. As part of Lester Melrose‘s stable of session musicians, Jazz performed on hundreds of ARC and Bluebird recordings, and his long partnership with Big Bill Broonzy…

JOHNNY COPELAND

Johnny Copeland had been playing his hard-rocking Texas Blues for thirty years before his Grammy winning collaboration with Albert Collins and Robert Cray on the ‘Showdown!’ album in 1985. This sent his name around the world, and he journeyed abroad himself to bring back some African rhythms to his own compositions. With a big booming…

PETE JOHNSON

Pete Johnson was a drummer before he took up piano in the clubs and bars of Kansas City in the mid-20s. He teamed up with Big Joe Turner and they spent over ten years honing their act in upscale nightspots like The Sunset Cafe. After seeing Pete play in Kansas, producer John Hammond brought him…

‘BOOGIE BILL’ WEBB

Singer and guitarist Bill Webb from Jackson MS was almost 30 before he made his recording debut in 1953 when he was brought to a New Orleans studio by Fats Domino. Dave Bartholemew produced ‘Boogie Bill”s single ‘Bad Dog’, and it had more in common with the music of his Delta heritage than the fast…

LOUISIANA RED

Louisiana Red was an extraordinary character. A huge man with a slow, deliberate manner, he was a brilliant songwriter who used the tragedies of his own experience to produce a vivid, visceral Blues. His technique on slide-guitar harked back to the Delta, but he played harp and finger-style electric guitar too, and often moved himself…

JUKE BOY BONNER

Juke Boy Bonner got his name as a kid, because he would sing along with the juke-box. This multi-instrumentalist sometimes performed as a one-man-band, and he never had a hit record, but he wrote some excellent, perceptive songs about his hard life, his opinions on ‘race-relations’ and the economics of poverty. Weldon Bonner was born…

TONY ‘TS’ McPHEE

When the British Blues Boom was getting underway, Tony McPhee was one of the kids that followed Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies around and then decided to play the Blues themselves. He had learned his chops playing the Blues club circuit so thoroughly that his band The Groundhogs were asked to back John Lee Hooker…

LEO FENDER

The man who gave the world the Stratocaster, the Telecaster and the Precision Bass was a trained accountant who started out tinkering with electronics in his spare time. Growing up in Anaheim CA, the 13-year-old Clarence Leonidas (Leo) Fender was fascinated by the loud, home-made radio his uncle used at his car repair workshop, so…

JIMMIE VAUGHAN

Jimmie will always be known as SRV’s big bro’, but his long contribution to Texas Blues-rock shouldn’t be underestimated. From the bar bands that inspired his kid brother to the Fabulous Thunderbirds and a long solo career, Jimmie has kept pounding out his own kind of Texas roadhouse Blues. This has resulted in fourteen albums…

BIG DADDY KINSEY

Big Daddy Kinsey played a range of Blues that told of his Delta roots and the Golden Age of Chicago Blues, and with the wider influences of his sons in The Kinsey Report, included funky rock and reggae in an act that appealed to Blues fans all over the world. Lester Kinsey of Pleasant Grove…