Blues Music Artists

BILLY BOY ARNOLD

Chicago harp player Billy Boy learned from the best: legend has it that the kid knocked on John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson‘s door and asked him how he played the harp. The patrician Sonny Boy gave the 13-year-old some lessons, but that tutoring was cut short when the maestro was murdered soon afterwards. Billy Boy…

DRIFTIN SLIM

Driftin’ Slim was an Arkansas Bluesman who learned his harp playing with both ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamsons, and found a degree of local fame later on the West coast as a one-man-band. Elmon Mickle was born near Little Rock AK in 1919, and when he was young, he met John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, who kindly…

PAUL ‘Hucklebuck’ WILLIAMS

Paul Williams is best remembered for his smash hit ‘The Hucklebuck’, which topped the R&B charts for 14 weeks in 1949, and stayed in the listings for 32 weeks. The record popularised a dance craze and led to a follow-up from Paul’s ‘Hucklebuckers’ some months later, but he was more than just a one-hit-wonder. Born…

TEXAS ALEXANDER

Most Blues singers play guitar, harp, piano or some other instrument, but Texas Alexander’s powerful tenor voice was the only thing he needed to knock you sideways with his primitive Blues. Singing in the street or standing on the back of a wagon at a party or fish-fry, maybe backed by a guitarist, he would…

FRANK STOKES

Some Pioneers of the Blues are honoured and remembered, and some slip into obscurity, and it’s a shame that Frank Stokes has become one of the latter. He grew up playing the Blues before WWI, when it was just an obscure local folk music from the north of the Mississippi Delta, and his tremendous voice…

ROY BROWN

There is an on-going debate about the origins of Rock’n’Roll, but there is little doubt that it sounded very much like the R&B that Roy Brown was producing in New Orleans around 1950. His powerful, emotional Gospel style vocals, with melismatic swoops, shrieks and bellowing choruses, influenced the singing of generations of Rockers and Bluesmen…

LEFTY DIZZ

The History of the Blues is littered with wild characters like Charley Patton, Little Walter and Guitar Slim, but Lefty Dizz was one of the wildest, despite being little known outside Chicago. A fixture on the club scene from the mid-60s until the early 90s, Lefty and his band Shock Treatment pulled every trick in…

NICKY HOPKINS

Best known for his work with The Rolling Stones, Nicky Hopkins’ Blues-soaked piano figures also featured on the work of The Jeff Beck Group, The Who, The Steve Miller Band, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and a host of others. Nicky’s on-going health issues made it extremely difficult for him to commit to the punishing…

AL ‘Blind Owl’ WILSON

Al Wilson played harp and guitar for the great white American Blues band, Canned Heat, from it’s formation in 1965 to his untimely death in 1970. As an instrumentalist, singer and lyricist, he was a cornerstone of the band; as a student of the Blues, he was a respected researcher who was part of a…

EDITH WILSON

Edith Wilson was one of the early ‘Divas’ who recorded Blues songs for the newly discovered ‘race market‘ in the early 20s. She had quite a few hit records and went on to find fame in the entertainment industry as a singer on stage and in nightclubs. She toured widely with her comedy revues, sang…