Vocals | All About Blues Music

JOHN MAYALL

John Mayall played a crucial role in the development of British music in the 60’s that re-vitalised the Blues from its enclaves in the Black American community and gave it to everybody. As leader of the Bluesbreakers, his revolving door policy gave dozens of young players a chance to step into the spotlight. Mayall himself…

PETER GREEN’S FLEETWOOD MAC

When Blue Horizon boss Mike Vernon arrived at the studio in 1966 to produce John Mayall‘s second Bluesbreakers album ‘Hard Road’, he noticed a new amp and no sign of Eric Clapton. Vernon was shocked that ‘God’ was not in the band, but Mayall said, “Don’t worry, we’ve got somebody better!” They were big boots…

JOE BONAMASSA

Joe Bonamassa is taking the Blues to new places, as his songwriting talents blossom and his virtuoso instrumental work explores infinite possibilities of a man and his guitar. Starting out as something of a ‘boy wonder’, Joe has developed into a mature artist who can impress the afficionados, and yet remain accessible to the first…

BUKKA WHITE

Virtuoso slide guitar playing on his National Steel, his deep, distinctively agile voice, and his talent for improvising songs out of thin air, for hours on end, made Bukka White a prized discovery of the Folk/Blues revival of the sixties. Booker T Washington White was born in the hill country of Mississippi in 1906, the…

PAUL BUTTERFIELD

Nobody knows how a 15-year-old middle class white kid got into the Blues clubs on the South side of Chicago in 1957, but that is where Paul Butterfield met the Blues head-on. He was learning to play the flute at school, but what he heard in those smoky dives inspired him to switch to harmonica…

ALEXIS KORNER

Alexis Korner was an inspirational force in the British Blues Boom of the sixties. As a performer and band leader, he was a pathfinder and mentor for a whole generation of young musicians and as a broadcaster he spread the word about the Blues to the whole British population. In 1928, Alexis was born in…

RORY GALLAGHER

Rory Gallagher was a great front-man for a blues-rock band. His guitar playing, loud, caustic, soulful or delicate, was always a clear and coherent statement, complimented by a distinctive voice capable of raw power and surprising gentleness. Growing up in Cork, the young Rory listened to American music on AFN and copied players like Lead…

ERIC CLAPTON

Eric Clapton became the world’s first rock star guitar hero. The skinny white kid from England learned to play Blues guitar; rode the high wave of 60’s rock revolution; wiped out spectacularly, and gradually earned respect as a lyrical and sensitive interpreter of the music. As an artist who tours and records regularly, and as…

BIG BILL BROONZY

Big Bill Broonzy was a John the Baptist figure in the scripture of the Blues: a charismatic fore-runner of greater things to come. He took the sound of early Chicago Blues Bands out of the Windy City, across the country, and eventually to Europe where he planted a seed that came back in The British…

MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL

Fred McDowell was an enigma. A modest, self-effacing man who didn’t even own a guitar until he was 37 years old, and who worked as a farmer until he was over 60, Fred was a prodigious virtuoso of the bottleneck guitar. His command of the expressive ‘vocal’ quality of his playing, with it’s slides and…