MickeyV | All About Blues Music

ERIC CLAPTON

Eric Clapton became the world’s first rock star guitar hero. The skinny white kid from England learned to play Blues guitar; rode the high wave of 60’s rock revolution; wiped out spectacularly, and gradually earned respect as a lyrical and sensitive interpreter of the music. As an artist who tours and records regularly, and as…

WEST COAST BLUES

California is not the place you expect to find the Blues. It does not reek of the murderous working conditions of Chicago‘s killing floor, the hardscrabble existence of sharecroppers in the Delta, or the relentless dehumanision of production lines in Detroit and a hundred other industrial cities. In fact, the low numbers of Black Americans…

BIG BILL BROONZY

Big Bill Broonzy was a John the Baptist figure in the scripture of the Blues: a charismatic fore-runner of greater things to come. He took the sound of early Chicago Blues Bands out of the Windy City, across the country, and eventually to Europe where he planted a seed that came back in The British…

CHICAGO BLUES

The Blues was born in the Delta and grew up on its journey from the country to the city, but the place it came of age was Chicago. When Muddy Waters got off the train from Mississippi in 1942, he soon noticed two things. First, he was going to need an electric guitar turned up…

MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL

Fred McDowell was an enigma. A modest, self-effacing man who didn’t even own a guitar until he was 37 years old, and who worked as a farmer until he was over 60, Fred was a prodigious virtuoso of the bottleneck guitar. His command of the expressive ‘vocal’ quality of his playing, with it’s slides and…

T-BONE WALKER

T-Bone Walker has a good claim to be the first guitar hero. He put out the first electric Blues record and his eloquent phrasing and masterful command of this new instrument made him the prototype for millions that followed, even if they had never heard of him! He was a powerful singer and entertainer too:…

LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS

Sam ‘Lightnin’ Hopkins was a master stylist of Blues guitar, who had an engaging talent for improvising humorous lyrics to his vast repertoire of songs. His complex guitar work had the flavour of early Texas Blues styles, and although his voice was dry and scratchy, his songs and the spontaneous stories he told at his…

JOHNNY OTIS

Few people have contributed more to R&B than Johnny Otis. All round musician, bandleader, DJ, promoter, talent scout, song-writer, label owner and producer, he found time to become a TV host, preacher, politician, author and organic farmer. He also crossed the colour-line at a time when that was very rare. The ambitious Greek teenager from…

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

In the early 80’s, the Blues had dropped from popular view again, but nobody did more to pick it up and shove it in people’s faces than Stevie Ray Vaughan. His bold, fiery leadership of power trio Double Trouble invited comparison with Hendrix, but his deep empathy for the Blues made guitar heroes and old-school…

ETTA JAMES

Etta James was a feisty lady with a sultry and passionate voice equally at home with R&B dance tunes and soulful ballads. Her striking good looks, with almond eyes and short blonde hair, made her a publicists dream, even though she had enough personal problems in her long career to give any manager screaming nightmares.…