Blues Music Artists

Beth Hart

Today’s blues singers are often saddled with the unfortunate title of ‘pretenders to the throne,’ which is to say it is presumed they didn’t earn their blues the old-fashioned way, paying their dues with decades of harsh, itinerant lives, picking cotton, eking out meager livings and enduring an endless barrage of abuse. Barely in her…

Aynsley Lister

With a propulsive drive that seems to erupt directly from a wounded soul, Aynsley Lister’s scorching guitar work sounds as though it could have come from an itinerant blues master of from ages past eager to escape a life of sharecropping. But as his name would suggest Aynsley is no Delta Bluesman. He’s one of…

Shemekia Copeland

The way Shemekia Copeland’s soaring voice scorches into a listener’s soul you’d swear you were hearing a vocal talent born to inherit the mantle of blues greatness. And you’d be right. With a father like Texas bluesman Johnny Copeland and a birthplace like Harlem, New York City, this expressive blues-shouter couldn’t have asked for a…

BEN POOLE

If ever a simple Youtube video told you everything you needed to know about a particular up-and coming-artist it is Ben Poole’s unforgettable live rendition of the classic Temptations track “I Know I’m losing You.” Poole’s version announces its sinister mission with a searing riff that cuts as deep as Dennis Edwards’ icy vocals from…

JELLY ROLL MORTON

The New Orleans pianist Jelly Roll Morton claimed to have ‘invented’ Jazz. That is a very large claim, but the egotistical Jelly Roll was not a man to down-play his own talents. While it is true that Jelly Roll was the first to publish a Jazz tune as sheet music, his assertion that Buddy Bolden…

J D SHORT

J.D. Short is in nobody’s Hall of Fame, indeed his name is almost forgotten today, but he was a Blues player of exceptional quality. His clear, bright voice had a distinctive vibrato, but he could wail like a demon, moan like a dying man and suddenly switch to a fluid falsetto. He was an incredibly…

JOHNNY YOUNG

The mandolin is a small member of the lute family, usually having four pairs of strings tuned in unison. While it may be most associated with medieval Italian music, Vivaldi and Mozart would surely fling off their wigs and boogie to the sound of Blues Mandolin played by Yank Rachell and ‘Papa Charlie’ McCoy. A…

Kat & Co.

The Blues is like a virus, constantly regenerating and mutating into new forms, and virtually impossible to kill! Kat & Co is a distinctive collection of unlikely elements that blend to give today’s insight into a music that is 100 years old, centred around the confident, statuesque figure of Kat, who manages to combine the…

DAN SANE

We think of early Blues performance as just a guy with a guitar or harp, pouring his heart into a solitary lament, but in reality they mostly performed in pairs, with a ‘second’ guitar propelling the tune while the ‘lead’ instrument played turnarounds and melodic lines. One of the earliest and most successful of these…

MATT SCHOFIELD

Old folks sometimes say that the Blues is dying, but so long as new cohorts of young players are inspired to express themselves through this powerful medium, we have nothing to worry about. Matt Schofield is a young Englishman who has grasped the legacy of the Blues, and like Clapton in the 60s and Stevie…