Blues Music Artists

WILLIAM CLARKE

The sound of the harp has been central to the Blues since it’s origins in the Delta, and when harp players in Chicago amplified their instruments, the term ‘Mississippi Sax’ was born. William Clarke absorbed the Chicago sound and, following a skilled mentor, he took the harp to new places and his strong voice and…

GRAHAM BOND

Graham Bond is one of the long-forgotten pioneers of the British Blues Boom of the early 60s that gave the world The Rolling Stones, Cream and hundreds of bands that incorporated the ‘Blues scale’ and ‘Blues sensibilities’ into mainstream music. Graham’s lack of hit records, his involvement with heavy drugs and The Occult, and ongoing…

ELVIN BISHOP

The Blues got a big new audience in the 60s when white kids discovered the power of this fantastically expressive music, which they took up enthusiastically and turned into a cultural phenomenon. The British Blues Boom, and bands like The Stones and The Animals took the world by storm, but in The States some youngsters…

MICKEY BAKER

Very few guitarists are credited with changing the sound of popular music, but Mickey Baker’s work on countless hit singles in the 50s incorporated the essence of R&B, as he added his hot riffs and turnarounds to some of the most iconic records of the day. His intelligent Jazz/Blues guitar was heard high in the…

ROBERT PETWAY

Little is known of Robert Petway’s life beyond the sessions he recorded for Bluebird Records in 1941 and ’42. Those records include ‘Catfish Blues’, which Muddy Waters adapted as ‘Rollin’ Stone’ a few years later, and the high quality of those pressings give us the authentic sound of Delta Blues just before it came to…

‘Harmonica’ FRANK FLOYD

Blues music sometimes reveals strange characters with extraordinary skills, but few were more talented than ‘Harmonica Frank’ Floyd. When Rice ‘Sonny Boy II’ Miller amazed world audiences in the 60s by playing a Blues tune on a harp stuck in his mouth like a cigar, he was pulling one third of a trick regularly performed…

JOE CALLICOTT

Joe Callicott was one of the original Delta Blues singers who played his guitar and sang at dances, parties and juke-joints back in the early 20s, but unlike some of his better known peers, Joe made only one record at the time. He was ‘rediscovered’ in the 60s to enjoy a short revival of his…

LONNIE PITCHFORD

Lonnie Pitchford is one of a very few Bluesman who have mastered the diddley bow, a one-stringed instrument of African origin that was the starting point for the ‘bottleneck’ and slide-guitar techniques that are fundamental to the origins of Blues in the Delta. Despite his unique talents, he is not well known outside his region…

BILLY BRANCH

The ‘Mississippi Saxophone’ was the name given to the Blues harp when players in post-WWII Chicago, following the lead of Little Walter, started blowing their big, horn-like solos through a microphone. That broad juke-joint sound is alive today, and can be heard in the playing of younger men like Billy Branch, who learned first-hand from…

RICK ESTRIN

The Blues has got to make you smile once in a while, even if it is just to keep from cryin’, but a night out with Little Charlie and the Nightcats is the kind of stimulant that cures most ills, and the medicine has been available for almost forty years. The main ingredient is Rick…