Vocals | All About Blues Music

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…