Vocals | All About Blues Music

DOUG SAHM

Little Douglas Wayne Sahm got started by playing steel guitar on a San Antonio radio station when he was just five years old. As a teenager Doug recorded for various small Texas labels and formed a gigging band called The Pharoahs, and in 1965, producer Huey Meaux encouraged him to form The Sir Douglas Quintet,…

WILLIE LOVE

During the 30s and 40s, Willie played his piano around the Delta juke-joints and the clubs of Memphis and Helena, before starting on a short-lived solo career in the early 50s. He had learned to play as a youth in Duncan MS, and drifted around the region, picking up work wherever he could. He met…

LONNIE DONEGAN

The Scottish singer born Anthony James Donegan was a fan of Blues and Country music, and played guitar around the London clubs in the early 50s. He joined Chris Barber‘s Band as they brought new kinds of American music to Britain, but he was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany where he met…

LOWELL FULSON

Lowell Fulson was a pioneer of West Coast Blues, a laid-back singer who wrote many classic songs and played his smoking guitar lines for a worldwide audience for half a century. He adapted his music for the times, playing hard Blues, Funky Soul and driving R&B, but never compromised his fluid yet penetrating style. Born…

HENRY TOWNSEND

St. Louis was a big Blues town in the 20s and 30s, and Mississippi born Henry was at the epicentre of the scene there. A fine singer, he recorded with his open-tuned slide guitar for Columbia in 1929 and Paramount in 1931. He taught himself to play piano and became one of the city’s most…

WILBERT HARRISON

When Wilbert Harrison left the Navy in 1950, he played calypso guitar and his first recordings for Rockin’ Records had a decidedly country feel. His switch to the Savoy label in 1954 did not bring any hits, but that situation changed in 1959 when his version of Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Kansas City’ was a big…

ROSIE LEDET

When the pretty 16-year-old Mary Rozella Bellard went to a dance in Lawtell, Louisiana to see Boozoo Chavis perform, it changed her life big-time. She was blown away by the good-rockin’ Zydeco music and was inspired to learn how to play accordion. That night she also met her husband Morris Ledet, who went on to…

SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE McGHEE

Blind harp wizard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, a spectacular guitar picker, had a 35-year-long partnership that helped to define Folk/Blues. Their Piedmont style Blues has a very different feel to Delta Blues and its effect on modern music has a very different genesis to the route through Chicago that gave us Blues-rock. New York…

JO ANN KELLY

Like Memphis Minnie before her, Jo Ann Kelly was the genuine article: a woman who could play the Blues as hard and deep as any man. Her rich, strong voice and authentic acoustic slide guitar work made her a big attraction on the British folk/blues circuit. Usually playing alone and sometimes singing ‘a capella’, she…

SAM COLLINS

Sam was an early Mississippi slide-guitar player who used the fluid qualities of his bottleneck technique, rather than the dramatic, slashing style preferred by some of this contemporaries, to emphasise his light, clear vocal delivery. Born in Louisiana but brought up across the MS state line in Bo Diddley‘s home-town of McComb, he began his…