Blues Music Artists

BLIND BLAKE

Apart from his enduring legacy of over 100 tracks of superb fingerpicking guitar, very little was known about the personal life of Blind Blake until very recently. A death certificate discovered in Milwaukee states that Arthur Blake was born in 1896 in Newport News VA, but he was probably raised in Northern Florida or the…

OTIS RUSH

Chicago in the mid-50s was Bluesville. The music of BB King, Elmore James and the ‘Big Beasts’ of the Chess label dominated the Delta based Blues heard in every club on the South-side, but across on the West side of town, a new sound was taking shape. The heavy back-beat behind harp and guitars that…

WEEPIN’ WILLIE

William Lorenzo Robinson was a Georgia sharecropper who wound up in Trenton NJ after the War, where he spent many years as the MC and singing as the warm up act in the local nightclub. During this period, he befriended BB King and sang with the great man and his band at the club sevearal…

FATS DOMINO

Some say, “The Blues had a Baby and they called it Rock’n’Roll.” Willie Dixon said, “Blues is the roots and the other music is the fruits.” Before anyone knew what Rock’n’Roll was, the rollicking good-time R&B coming out of the West Coast and New Orleans showed the direct connection between uptempo Blues and the music…

SHIRLEY COLLINS

English folk singer Shirley, met Alan Lomax in 1954 when he was living in London. They became romantically involved and also performed together in a ‘skiffle group’ with Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger. Five years later, Shirley travelled to The States with Alan to make some field recordings as part of his work for the…

JEREMY SPENCER

Jeremy could play slide-guitar just like Elmore James and that is what he was brought into Fleetwood Mac to do, contributing to massive hits like ‘Albatross’ and ‘Black Magic Woman’. His rumbunctuous stage act got Mac banned from some venues and, in turbulent times for the individual players, musical differences saw Jeremy becoming isolated within…

DeFORD BAILEY

Virtuoso harp player DeFord Bailey made a living playing for dances and parties around his home town, displaying a range of riffs and trills that any modern Blues harp player would envy. His live performances always had a comedy element, as he used his harp to imitate a railway engine, a wheezing jalopy, or any…

ROOSEVELT SYKES

‘The Honeydripper’, Roosevelt Sykes was probably the most important of the several piano Blues innovators who came out of St.Louis the inter-war years. This square cut figure with the elegant suit and the fat cigar was capable of pounding the keys in a rowdy barrelhouse style and he could boogie-woogie with the best of them,…

TAMPA RED

Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy were good friends, long-time drinking buddies and the twin powerhouses behind the Blues scene in 1930s Chicago. Neither man had an ego problem and they both acted as mentors to the dozens of young musicians arriving from the South. Red’s apartment became a rehearsal space, rooming house and unofficial…

ELIZABETH ‘LIBBA’ COTTEN

Not many Blues players have an instrumental style so unique that it carries their name. Libba Cotten’s phenomenally accurate, but ‘upside-down’ Piedmont style with its alternating bass strings became known as ‘Cotten-picking’. Not too many write a worldwide hit song at the age of 12 either, but this is only part of the extraordinary story…