Blues Music Artists

WALTER DAVIS

Mississippi born Walter was a young self-taught pianist when he set out for St.Louis in the mid-20s, but he fitted right in to the scene that had Peetie Wheatstraw or Roosevelt Sykes playing most nights. Heavily influenced by Leroy Carr and possessed of a mournful vocal tone, Walter cut his first record ‘M&O Blues’ was…

JO ANN KELLY

Like Memphis Minnie before her, Jo Ann Kelly was the genuine article: a woman who could play the Blues as hard and deep as any man. Her rich, strong voice and authentic acoustic slide guitar work made her a big attraction on the British folk/blues circuit. Usually playing alone and sometimes singing ‘a capella’, she…

SAM COLLINS

Sam was an early Mississippi slide-guitar player who used the fluid qualities of his bottleneck technique, rather than the dramatic, slashing style preferred by some of this contemporaries, to emphasise his light, clear vocal delivery. Born in Louisiana but brought up across the MS state line in Bo Diddley‘s home-town of McComb, he began his…

ALBERTA HUNTER

Alberta Hunter had a truly remarkable career. She started out singing in Chicago clubs at the age of 12; she was one of the original big selling Blues Divas who also wrote Bessie Smith‘s first hit; she had a four decade stage and cabaret career; she toured the world in WWII entertaining the Forces; she…

BIG JOE WILLIAMS

Big Joe Williams was a classic Mississippi Delta Bluesman. This gruff voiced, awkward fellow with his nine-string guitar had played in jug-bands and minstrel shows; he had wandered all over the South ‘riding the blinds’ as a hobo; played for tips on street-corners and juke-joints and then, when he moved to Chicago, wrote some songs that…

DOROTHY MOORE

‘Misty Blue’ was a big cross-over hit for Dorothy in 1976, as the perfect vehicle for her Southern flavoured soul-blues voice. Born in Jackson MS, the daughter of Mississippi Blind Boys’ Melvin Hendrex, Dorothy began singing in Gospel choirs, eventually emerging as a soloist. As a student at Jackson State University she formed a girl-group…

PINK ANDERSON

Back at the start of the 20th Century, when the original Blues music was born out of the hard life of rural African-American workers, travelling shows, circuses, tent-show revues and ‘medicine shows’ were a common sight in the South. They all had musicians as part of their entertainment, and these ‘wandering songsters’ spread the new…

IVORY JOE HUNTER

Ivory Joe Hunter (his full given name) was playing piano and developing his velvet voice around Beaumont Texas when he was recorded as a teenager for the Library of Congress in 1933. When he moved to Oakland CA. in 1942, he set up his own Ivory Records and his ‘Blues at Sunrise’ was a national…

RICE MILLER, SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON II

The man we know as ‘Sonny Boy Williamson II’, or Rice Miller, was born somewhere in Mississippi in 1899 (or 1897, or 1910 although newer sources say 1912) and his real name was Aleck (or Willie) Miller (or possibly Ford). Deception came easily to this man, so stories he told about his own past cannot…

SISTER ROSETTA THARPE

Sister Rosetta was a sanctified Gospel singer who caused consternation among the flock by appearing in theatres and nightclubs, singing the Blues. She was a glorious sight to behold in her smart dresses and high heels as she toted her electric guitar like a Tommy-gun, spattering Blues licks around her audience like red-hot bullets. Rosetta…