Vocals | All About Blues Music

JOHN DELAFOSE

Cajun and Zydeco are the folk music of the Louisiana and East Texas Creole French-speaking community, with the difference between the two tags being largely down to the skin-colour of the players. Before the music went national and then global, Gulf-Coast radio stations played the records of local players Iry LeJeune, Clifton Chenier and Nathan…

MICK ABRAHAMS

Mick Abrahams is a British Blues-Rock guitarist who was a founding member of stadium band Jethro Tull, in their first incarnation on the late 60s club scene. His desire to follow a path towards progressive Blues led to a split with Ian Anderson, the formation of Mick’s band Blodwyn Pig, and a lifetime of touring…

YANK RACHELL

The mandolin is not the first instrument one might associate with the Blues, but in the hands of ‘Yank’ Rachell, it became a familiar sound on stage and on records. From the late 20s ‘Jug Band Craze’ to the ‘urbanisation’ of the Blues in 30s Chicago, onward to the 60s Folk/Blues revival and almost to…

CEPHAS & WIGGINS

Piedmont Blues is the rather lesser known cousin of Delta Blues, and while the Mississippi players went to Chicago and generated electric Blues, the Piedmont artists gravitated to the New York club scene, inspiring a generation of post-WWII protest singers, including a kid called Bob Dylan, and a whole different kind of music. Cephas and…

QUEEN SYLVIA EMBRY

Very few women seem to play bass, but Queen Sylvia Embry was a fine player who impressed Willie Dixon so much he sent her to Europe to play on the American Blues Festival tours. She also had an expressive, deep-toned Gospel voice that made her a hit on the Chicago club circuit, and was even…

JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR

The Blues springs from some unlikely places these days, and a genteel English suburban neighborhood might seem pretty unlikely. It’s as far from the Delta as you could get, and when you hear blistering Blues licks and heart-rending vocals coming from a pretty girl-next-door type who would look more at home on the cover of…

ANDREW ODOM

Andrew ‘Big Voice’ Odom is a largely undiscovered gem of a Blues singer who plied his trade around the Chicago scene for many years, supplying his soulful vocal lines on many great performances by the èlite guitarists on the club circuit. His rich tone and superb timing might have made him a star, but he…

Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter)

Lead Belly was an enigma. Nobody could claim to have a wider repertoire; popular songs, dance tunes, blues and folk songs, prison ballads; the man was a human juke-box accompanying himself on guitar, mandolin, accordion and piano. Yet a man so rich in talent lived and died in poverty. In 1889 Huddie Ledbetter was born…

KIM SIMMONDS

Guitarist Kim Simmonds is the leader and founding member of Savoy Brown, the British Blues-rock band who rose to fame in the Blues Boom of the 60s, gathered a big following in The States and are still touring today. Kim has extended his boundaries by going back to acoustic Blues as a solo artist, and…

TINY BRADSHAW

Tiny Bradshaw was a successful big-band leader in the 30s who re-invented himself as an R&B shouter after WWII, in the hey-day of Jump-Blues. He co-wrote many of his songs, including ‘Train Kept Rollin’ which was a much bigger hit for Johnny Burnette in 1956, and has become a rock standard, covered by many bands.…