Blues Music Artists

SLIM HARPO

Slim Harpo wrote some classic Blues songs that made him Excello Records’ best selling artist and his easy-rolling Swamp Blues was an inspiration for many British bands that brought the Blues to American youth in the 60s. Pounding out his insistent Southern rhythms on guitar and blowing harp in a neck-rack, Slim’s music crossed a…

ISHMON BRACEY

Delta guitarist Ishmon (often spelled Ishman in older sources) only recorded a few tracks, but they were of consistently good quality, using variations on the usual verse structure, and his original 78s are much sought-after rarities today. As a teenager Ishmon was playing guitar on streetcorners, hoping for invitations to play at parties and fish-fries…

CYRIL DAVIES

Cyril Davies was a fine singer and an authentic electric harp player, and a Blues afficionado who did a great deal to foster the British Blues Boom of the early 60s. Cyril learnt guitar and banjo as a kid, but when he heard Little Walter on records, he switched to the harp. He joined Chris…

KIM WILSON

Best known as the frontman, singer and harp player with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Kim also leads his own band The Blues Revue. Born in Detroit but raised in California, Kim was a Blues disciple as a youth, following and learning from the great original Bluesmen who were still gigging in the 60s and 70s. Kim…

AMOS MILBURN

Pianist and singer Amos Milburn was one of the biggest R&B stars of the post WWII years. His signature tune ‘Chicken Shack Boogie’ went to No.1 in the R&B charts and he repeated the achievement three more times. He had a string of up-tempo hits with drinking songs like ‘One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer’,…

SPECKLED RED

Speckled Red was a boogie-woogie pianist who was a fixture on the club scene in Memphis and St. Louis in the 30s and 40s. His proto-rap ‘The Dirty Dozens’ was a hit in 1929, and he recorded many versions and updates over the years. Rufus Perryman was the birth name of Speckled Red. He and…

ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS

If country Blues is about lamenting a hard life, with poverty, violence, illiteracy, jail-time and betrayal by your woman, then Robert Pete Williams certainly lived that life. Despite being an endlessly inventive guitarist and a desperately soulful singer, Robert was never a big selling artist, but his appearances at Blues Festivals around the world opened…

MATT ‘GUITAR’ MURPHY

One of the most respected side-men on the Chicago Blues scene, Matt Murphy is universally acclaimed for his sharp, eloquent guitar lines that seem to say ‘Amen’ to every tune they attend. He has played with some of the seminal figures of the Blues and added high quality to their work in every instance, in…

JOHNNY ACE

Johnny Alexander had a short but brilliant career until he blew his own brains out backstage at his Christmas show. In the late 40s, Johnny could be found playing piano and singing in the clubs around his native Memphis. He was part of the loose collective of Blues musicians known as The Beale Streeters with…

JORMA KAUKONEN

Jorma Kaukonen is best known as the guitarist with San Francisco based psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane, but he is also an accomplished Piedmont Blues player. Jorma learned fingerpicking guitar in the style of Rev. Gary Davis and accompanied a young Janis Joplin on the campus of Santa Clara University in 1964. A founder member of…