MickeyV | All About Blues Music

BIG WALTER ‘SHAKEY’ HORTON

Shakey Horton was a giant of the Chicago Blues harp, a.k.a. ‘The Mississippi Saxophone’. His broad honking harp really did sound like a horn section, and the sense of space he created around his fluid, soulful solo lines was unique. Unlike his peers Little Walter and Rice ‘Sonny Boy II’ Miller, Shakey had little interest…

LITTLE RICHARD

If you took a Gospel shouter, some pounding New Orleans piano R&B, some very cheeky lyrics and an outrageous stage personality, you still wouldn’t quite have the phenomenon that is Little Richard. As R&B and jump-blues transformed into Rock’n’Roll in the mid-50s, Richard was at the cutting edge, all over the radio, the juke-box and…

GEORGE THOROGOOD

George Thorogood is not a great innovator, but he knows how to rock and he knows how to boogie and the fans love it. George and his band The Destroyers helped to kick off the eighties Blues boom that gave us Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray, and his steady Blues-rock output over the decades…

MAGIC SAM

Magic Sam was a pioneering guitar virtuoso on the club scene on the West-side of Chicago in the late 50s, where a new generation of Blues guitarists like Freddie King, Otis Rush, Luther Allison and Buddy Guy were tearing up the rule book. Sharp-edged guitar phrasing, honking saxes and hysterical vocals were the hallmark of this…

LEROY CARR

At a time when record companies were scouring the Delta for country Blues talent, Leroy Carr of Indianapolis came along with his sophisticated piano Blues that was rooted in an extremely different urban setting. His measured and melodic style and crooning vocals, especially in the company of his guitarist Scrapper Blackwell, introduced a new, more…

ALBERT COLLINS

Albert Collins was at the forefront of the Blues revival of the mid-80s, along with fellow Texans Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Copeland and with Robert Cray. Known as ‘The Ice-Man’ for his sparse, ringing guitar tone, he would often wander into the audience while playing. Albert took a while to get famous and left…

R L BURNSIDE

Like his friend and mentor, Mississippi Fred McDowell, RL Burnside was a farmer from the hill country of north-east Mississippi. He could play his rhythmic and often lyrical slide-guitar very much in the style of his long time neighbour Fred, and like him RL was a late entrant into the world of recording and touring,…

DR. JOHN

Dr. John is the living embodiment of New Orleans. Talented, scary, steeped in tradition, no stranger to drugs and violence, but always entertaining; Dr. John is also the character adopted by Mac Rebennack when it’s Showtime! With roots deep in jazz and R&B, with costumes and voodoo imagery coupled with that distinctive growl and piano…

CAREY BELL

Carey Bell was a Blues harp master whose technique incorporated the wild flares of Little Walter and the intricate melodic style of Big Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton. His long career as a side-man has been punctuated by solo albums and spells as a band-leader, sometimes sharing the stage with his son, the guitarist Lurie Bell. Born…

JOHN HAMMOND Jr.

John Hammond Jr. has enjoyed a long career playing country Blues on his National Steel guitar and Blues harp, carrying a technique soaked in the Delta to stages all over the world. John is no country copyist, as his electric guitar work shows, but his dedication to acoustic Blues has done a lot to preserve…