MickeyV | All About Blues Music

ROBERT PETWAY

Little is known of Robert Petway’s life beyond the sessions he recorded for Bluebird Records in 1941 and ’42. Those records include ‘Catfish Blues’, which Muddy Waters adapted as ‘Rollin’ Stone’ a few years later, and the high quality of those pressings give us the authentic sound of Delta Blues just before it came to…

‘Harmonica’ FRANK FLOYD

Blues music sometimes reveals strange characters with extraordinary skills, but few were more talented than ‘Harmonica Frank’ Floyd. When Rice ‘Sonny Boy II’ Miller amazed world audiences in the 60s by playing a Blues tune on a harp stuck in his mouth like a cigar, he was pulling one third of a trick regularly performed…

JOE CALLICOTT

Joe Callicott was one of the original Delta Blues singers who played his guitar and sang at dances, parties and juke-joints back in the early 20s, but unlike some of his better known peers, Joe made only one record at the time. He was ‘rediscovered’ in the 60s to enjoy a short revival of his…

LONNIE PITCHFORD

Lonnie Pitchford is one of a very few Bluesman who have mastered the diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument of African origin that was the starting point for the ‘bottleneck’ and slide-guitar techniques that are fundamental to the origins of Blues in the Delta. Despite his unique talents, he is not well known outside his region…

BILLY BRANCH

The ‘Mississippi Saxophone’ was the name given to the Blues harp when players in post-WWII Chicago, following the lead of Little Walter, started blowing their big, horn-like solos through a microphone. That broad juke-joint sound is alive today, and can be heard in the playing of younger men like Billy Branch, who learned first-hand from…

RICK ESTRIN

The Blues has got to make you smile once in a while, even if it is just to keep from cryin’, but a night out with Little Charlie and the Nightcats is the kind of stimulant that cures most ills, and the medicine has been available for almost forty years. The main ingredient is Rick…

COCO MONTOYA

Coco Montoya plays guitar left-handed and ‘upside down’ like Albert King, the man whose records first turned him on to the Blues, but it was a different Albert who took the kid under his wing and showed him how to put his deep emotions into his playing. A long career was to follow, firstly in…

NICK GRAVENITES

‘Nick the Greek’ Gravenites is a living link between the Chicago Blues clubs of the 50s; the flowering of the West-coast scene in the late 60s, and his current status as an elder statesman of the Blues. With an authentic, aggresssive growl, a wide array of writing and producing talents and an instinctive feel for…

COUSIN LEROY

Cousin Leroy was a singer, harp player and guitarist from rural Georgia whose R&B records in the late 50s put the emphasis squarely on the Blues half of the equation. He was part of the Post-WWII club scene in New York, and his regular associates included Champion Jack Dupree and Larry Dale, who graced all…

PIANO BLUES

The piano has been at the heart of Blues music from the earliest days, but unlike the ‘wandering songsters’ with a guitar or a harp in their hand, Blues pianists had to rely on whatever instrument they could find to play their music. Most juke-joints, brothels, bars and drinking dens had some kind of beaten…