Texas | All About Blues Music

JOHNNY COPELAND

Johnny Copeland had been playing his hard-rocking Texas Blues for thirty years before his Grammy winning collaboration with Albert Collins and Robert Cray on the ‘Showdown!’ album in 1985. This sent his name around the world, and he journeyed abroad himself to bring back some African rhythms to his own compositions. With a big booming…

JUKE BOY BONNER

Juke Boy Bonner got his name as a kid, because he would sing along with the juke-box. This multi-instrumentalist sometimes performed as a one-man-band, and he never had a hit record, but he wrote some excellent, perceptive songs about his hard life, his opinions on ‘race-relations’ and the economics of poverty. Weldon Bonner was born…

JIMMIE VAUGHAN

Jimmie will always be known as SRV’s big bro’, but his long contribution to Texas Blues-rock shouldn’t be underestimated. From the bar bands that inspired his kid brother to the Fabulous Thunderbirds and a long solo career, Jimmie has kept pounding out his own kind of Texas roadhouse Blues. This has resulted in fourteen albums…

JOHNNY WINTER

Johnny Winter was probably the most consistent Blues-rock player of his generation, pounding the highways of the world, bringing his high-powered Texas style to many generations of fans. From his breakthrough in 1969, he toured and recorded almost without a break, and when he left us in 2014, he was about to launch a new…

LOU ANN BARTON

Lou Ann Barton is a sassy Texas Blues singer who belts out her roadhouse Blues with a passion that should have made her much more well known. A legend on the Austin music scene, she knows how to put on a show and her distinctive, full-bodied voice and her commanding stage presence makes Lou Ann…

CHRIS DUARTE

Texas has produced some great Blues-rock guitarists, and Chris keeps that strong tradition going. Born in San Antonio, Chris moved to Austin as a youth, and played his jazz influenced Stratocaster around the local club scene. He saw Stevie Ray Vaughan at one of the last hometown gigs before he got his big break, and…

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON

Willie Johnson was from Texas, and his haunting slide-guitar playing didn’t slash and rage like some of his Mississippi Delta counterparts, but had a stylish, vocal quality that perfectly complimented his gruff, bass voice. Growing up playing for change on street-corners in East Texas towns, Willie became a Baptist preacher and all his life he…

JOHN CAMPBELL

John Campbell was a quiet man who played a dark and haunting acoustic Blues, combining a unique, percussive slide-guitar style with a modern songwriting ethic. The result is an authentic kind of Texas Blues that takes a familiar form, but sounds fresh and new, even when covering the classics. John died before he gained wide…

KIM WILSON

Best known as the frontman, singer and harp player with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Kim also leads his own band The Blues Revue. Born in Detroit but raised in California, Kim was a Blues disciple as a youth, following and learning from the great original Bluesmen who were still gigging in the 60s and 70s. Kim…

ALBERT COLLINS

Albert Collins was at the forefront of the Blues revival of the mid-80s, along with fellow Texans Stevie Ray Vaughan and Johnny Copeland and with Robert Cray. Known as ‘The Ice-Man’ for his sparse, ringing guitar tone, he would often wander into the audience while playing. Albert took a while to get famous and left…