Blues Music Artists

MARCIA BALL

Texas and the Gulf Coast has produced some of the best modern music in the Blues tradition, and Austin, Texas maintains its reputation as the epicentre of the genre. Long-time resident Marcia Ball is a formidable pianist with a strong sense of swing and a sweet-toned voice to carry off her largely self-written repertoire. While…

YANK RACHELL

The mandolin is not the first instrument one might associate with the Blues, but in the hands of ‘Yank’ Rachell, it became a familiar sound on stage and on records. From the late 20s ‘Jug Band Craze’ to the ‘urbanisation’ of the Blues in 30s Chicago, onward to the 60s Folk/Blues revival and almost to…

BLIND JOE REYNOLDS

Blind Joe Reynolds was the nom-de-Blues of Joe Sheppard, an early Blues singer and guitarist who lived a surprisingly long life, mostly outside the law. Disputed reports of his origins put his birthplace as Tallulah LA in 1904, although others cite somewhere in Arkansas in 1900, and a nephew claims he was actually called Joe…

ROBIN TROWER

Blues-Rock lost a unique and masterful talent when Jimi Hendrix left us, but one man who picked up the banner and held it high was Robin Trower. He turned down the fuzz-box and cranked up the reverb, but the sounds that Jimi pioneered were championed in the 70s by Robin’s power trios, and his work…

BOB BROZMAN

Barney Josephson ran The Café Society, a club that pioneered racially integrated music in New York back in the 40s. It is not surprising thet his nephew Bob Brozman got into music, but he took on the huge task in trying to integrate music from all over the world into his work, searching out ‘pre-industrial’…

‘LITTLE HAT’ JONES

Little Hat Jones was a fine singer with a strong guitar technique, but he had a habit of starting his songs very quickly, slowing down drastically when he started to sing, and then arriving at some kind of compromise as the song went on. He turned this fault into a virtue insofar as it made…

CEPHAS & WIGGINS

Piedmont Blues is the rather lesser known cousin of Delta Blues, and while the Mississippi players went to Chicago and generated electric Blues, the Piedmont artists gravitated to the New York club scene, inspiring a generation of post-WWII protest singers, including a kid called Bob Dylan, and a whole different kind of music. Cephas and…

FRANKIE Half-Pint JAXON

Drag acts are not usually associated with The Blues, but in the Speakeasies of Harlem and Chicago, during the ‘Roaring 20s’, it was a case of ‘anything goes’. Gladys Bentley wore a top-hat and tux as she charmed the customers of New York clubs, and in Chicago, Frankie ‘Half Pint’ Jaxon would amaze his audiences…

QUEEN SYLVIA EMBRY

Very few women seem to play bass, but Queen Sylvia Embry was a fine player who impressed Willie Dixon so much he sent her to Europe to play on the American Blues Festival tours. She also had an expressive, deep-toned Gospel voice that made her a hit on the Chicago club circuit, and was even…

SAM MYERS

Sam Myers was born in Mississippi and learned his trade in Chicago, working for many years with Elmore James, but after a long spell on the ‘chitlin circuit’, he gained a whole new career as the front man for Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets. Sam was a big-voiced singer, a sparkling harp soloist and talented…