Blues Music Artists

DAVID ‘Honeyboy’ EDWARDS

One of the few authentic Delta Blues players to bring the music into the present day, Honeyboy Edwards recorded a Grammy winning album in 2008 and was still performing almost until the day he died. Honeyboy reported that he was with his friend, the legendary Delta Bluesman Robert Johnson on the night he drank the…

BLIND WILLIE McTELL

Willie McTell is rightly revered as one of the giants of early acoustic Blues. With his clear, light tenor voice and his stylish 12-string fingerpicking and slide guitar, he also wrote many classic Blues songs that have lingered into the modern era. Blind from birth, Willie was, by all accounts, a smart, generous, literate man…

JOHNNY ‘Big Moose’ WALKER

Shy, retiring characters don’t get called ‘Big Moose’, and loud barrelhouse pianist Johnny Walker got his tag from wearing his hair long and shaggy, but also for his wild personality. He was hugely popular with his fellow musicians for his energy and humour, and onstage he sometimes performed wearing a gorilla mask. When on tour…

WILLIE DIXON

In June 1960, Willie Dixon went into the studio with Howlin’ Wolf to play bass on some songs he had written for the gravel-voiced Blues icon. They cut ‘Wang-Dang Doodle’, ‘Back Door Man’ and ‘Spoonful’, all Blues classics that would have guaranteed their writer legendary status if they were produced in one lifetime, not one…

CLIFTON CHENIER

The accordion is not an obvious instrument for the Blues, but in the hands of Clifton Chenier, The King of Zydeco, resplendent in his robes and crown and singing his in Creole patois, good-time boogie and swamp blues gained a delicious new flavour. Once confined to a small corner of Southern Louisiana, this joyful blend…

WILLIE MAE FORD SMITH

Born into a Baptist family in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in 1904, Willie Mae sang everything from hymns to work-songs and Blues, but when she joined with her three sisters they were a sensation in the world of Gospel music. She was discovered as a teenager at The Baptist Convention and was later taken up by…

Ruby Turner

Ruby’s warm and emotional voice lends itself to Gospel and Soul as well as the Blues. Capable of depicting such extremes of joy and pain in her performances, she engages with her audience to produce a very special kind of empathy. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica but a brought up in Birmingham, England she is…

ROBERT ‘JR’ LOCKWOOD

Robert Jr. Lockwood learned guitar from Robert Sr.- the Senior in this case being the legendary Robert Johnson. Around 1930, Johnson became romantically involved with Esther Lockwood after her divorce, when her son was about 15. The lad had been learning music on the family pump-organ, but his mother’s new boyfriend encouraged him to play…

MEMPHIS SLIM

Barrel-house and Boogie-woogie pianists don’t come much bigger than Memphis Slim. Standing six-six with a distinctive streak of white hair, this handsome and urbane figure knew how to cut a dash. His command of the 88s and his clear articulate vocals gave him an unmistakable musical style too, which he used to great effect in…

JIMMY REED

The secret of Jimmy Reed’s music was that this simple, bare-bones, laid-back style of Blues was just so easy to listen to. Jimmy’s laconic but rock-steady shuffle sound out-sold every other Blues artist from 1955 to 1961, scoring a dozen entries into the Billboard Hot 100 pop charts and selling many millions of records. His…