Artist Bios: F - L
Artist Bios: F - L
Buddy Guy
(born George Guy)
July 30, 1936 - Present
Birthplace: Lettsworth, Louisiana
"Sit And Cry" (117 k, 10 sec.)
"I must have been put here for a reason. Ain't nobody ever taught me nothing. There wasn't nobody to teach me nothing. So my talent got to be God-gifted, 99 1/2 percent. The rest of the stuff I watched, looked and learned"---Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy, along with Otis Rush and Magic Sam, have helped move the blues guitar into its postmodern era. With a style some believe built similar to B.B. King, Guy was both a popular session player and a successful solo artist. Jimi Hendrix is said to have admitted to being profoundly influenced by Guy, while Eric Clapton has called him the greatest blues guitarist ever. In fact, few blues musicians today can match Guy's ability to make a guitar solo the ultimate blues statement.
Guy was born and raised in Louisiana and began playing professionally in and around Baton Rouge in the early 1950s. It wasn't until he relocated to Chicago in 1957 that his career began to take shape. Guy worked himself into the city's blues scene. In 1958 he beat both Magic Sam and Otis Rush in a club-sponsored "Battle of the Blues" contest, which led Sam to recommend him to Eli Toscano, owner of the Artistic and Cobra labels. Guy recorded two singles for Artistic, "Sit And Cry" (117 k, 10 sec.) and "This Is the End," before the company went bankrupt.
Guy signed with Chess Records in 1960 and became an in-demand session guitarist there, backing such noted artists as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson(Rice Miller), and Koko Taylor. In 1962 his own record, "Stone Crazy," went to number 12 on the R&B charts. Guy left Chess in 1967 and moved to the Vanguard label, where he cut such albums as A Man and the Blues, This Is Buddy Guy, and Hold That Plane! He also formed a professional relationship with harp player Junior Wells. The duo proved especially popular with white blues fans of the late '60s and early '70s.
Buddy can mimic Howlin' Wolf and Guitar Slim in one set and in the next, settle into a study of soul-blues that was far removed from the onstage frenzy for which he was known.
Guy continued to play blues clubs in the U.S. and at blues fests in Europe, with little attention from the rock crowd that had adopted him in the late '60s. That changed in 1989 when Guy opened his now-famous blues club, Legends, in Chicago. The club has become a stop-off point for visiting bluesmen and blues-influenced rockers.
In 1991 Eric Clapton invited Guy to perform with him at the Royal Albert Hall in London. His stunning performances with Clapton led to a recording contract with the Silvertone label and the release of Damn Right, I've Got the Blues, an acclaimed comeback album that included cameo appearances by Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Mark Knopfler. A follow-up album, Feels Like Rain, came out in 1993. Guy continues to perform and record. He is the brother of blues guitarist Phil Guy.
"Sit And Cry" is from The Very Best Of Buddy Guy Copyright © Rhino Records Inc., 1992.
Jimi Hendrix
(born James Hendrix, aka Jimmy Jones)
November 27, 1942 - September 18, 1970
Birthplace: Seattle, Washington
Although Jimi Hendrix will be remembered as rock's most innovative and revolutionary guitarist, he had the natural instincts of a bluesman and in fact built much of his early repertoire from the blues. Live, Hendrix played plenty of blues his sets were almost always filled with long, extended jams based on blues chord progressions heard in such gems as "Red House" and "California Night."
Some of what Hendrix did with feedback, fuzz tones, distortion, and volume elaborated on the styles of blues guitarists Pat Hare and Guitar Slim. With his screeching solos, Hendrix shattered rock and blues traditions regarding how long and in what capacity solos should be delivered. He broke down barriers between blues and rock so that his guitar ideas flowed freely from one idiom to the other. His influence can be heard in the guitar styles of bluesmen Magic Sam, Buddy Guy, and, later on, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Hendrix's earliest influences came from Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Guitar Slim, and Chuck Berry. After a stint in the army from 1959 to 1961, Hendrix, working under the name Jimmy James, became a respected sideman, playing behind such soul and R&B artists as Little Richard, King Curtis, and the Isley Brothers. In 1964 Hendrix moved to New York City and formed his own band, Jimmy James and Blue Flames, which mostly played Jimmy Reed, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson covers. Barely surviving in the Greenwich Village folk and blues scene, Hendrix nonetheless became a regular at the Cafe What. For a brief spell, he played with blues guitarist and singer John Hammond, Jr. before he was approached by Chas Chandler, the former bass player of the English blues-rock group the Animals. Chandler invited Hendrix to go to London and start a new group, which Chandler would manage. Hendrix took the offer, moved to London in 1966, and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bass player Noel Redding.
The Experience's debut album, Are You Experienced?, contained a number of Hendrix classics, including "Purple Haze," "Manic Depression," and "Foxy Lady." On this album, Hendrix introduced to the rock world his awesome guitar prowess and proceeded to redefine the standards by which all other rock guitarists would subsequently be judged. Hendrix's legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, at which he burned his guitar in an orgiastic climax, only increased the hoopla surrounding him and his band.
Are You Experienced? was a startling work that still ranks as one of the greatest debut albums in rock history. On his two 1968 releases, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, Hendrix continued his probe into psychedelia and the sonic stratosphere, yet still managed to keep his relationship with the blues solid.
In 1969 Hendrix dissolved the Experience. After playing the Woodstock festival, Hendrix formed the Band of Gypsies with old army chum and bass player Billy Cox and former Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles. Hendrix had built own recording studio, Electric Ladyland, in Greenwich Village and recorded regularly in 1970. Going off in a jazz direction, Hendrix played with guitarists John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell and planned to record with trumpet player Miles Davis.
After a performance at the Isle of Wight rock festival in late summer of 1970, Hendrix went to London. There on September 18 he died in his sleep, choking on vomit after ingesting a heavy dose of barbiturates. He was twenty-seven years old. Hendrix was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
John Lee Hooker
August 17, 1920 - Present
Birthplace: Clarksdale, Mississippi
"Crawlin' Kingsnake"(111 k, 10 sec.)
"The blues don't make you poor, the blues don't bring you down. [The] blues is a thing, you get sad, like when things ain't going right... the blues picks you up. Blues is a pick-up, it's not a let-down."---John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker is one of the giants of post-World War II blues, on a par with Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, and Lightnin' Hopkins. Known as the father of the boogie, an incessant one-chord exercise in blues intensity and undying rhythm, Hooker's sound is also a study in deep blues. From his guitar come shadowy tones, open tunings, feverish note clusters, and that familiar chugging rhythm that has been his blues signature-all of which hark back to the music' s formative years.
Hooker also owns one of the most distinctive voices in blues. It reaches down deep and comes together slowly and with careful consideration. It' s soaked with sexuality, spiced with arrogance, and contains layers of weathered, bassy textures. Hear John Lee Hooker once and both his voice and his guitar are thereafter unmistakable and unforgettable.
Unlike the other major blues figures of the late 1940s and 1950s who hailed from Chicago, Texas, or Memphis, Hooker made his mark in Detroit and became the Motor City's biggest blues star. He cut nearly as many recordings as Lightnin' Hopkins the artist many blues historians believe to be the most recorded in the music's history. Because Hooker recorded under a number of pseudonyms to escape contractual obligations, his recording catalog is a confusing maze of albums and singles.
Hooker not only was popular with black blues audiences, but in the early '60s he influenced an entire generation of British blues-rockers. Groups such as the Animals (the band had a major hit in 1964 with Hooker's "Boom Boom"), the Rolling Stones, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and early Fleetwood Mac all borrowed extensively from Hooker. In the U.S., Canned Heat built much of its late-'60s repertoire from Hooker's boogie rhythms. More recently, blues- rockers such as Johnny Winter and George Thorogood have reinterpreted the Hooker boogie, while Bruce Springsteen made "Boom Boom" one of his concert highpoints in the late '80s.
Hooker was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and was taught the basics of blues guitar by his stepfather, Will Moore. As a child, Hooker learned to sing in church, and he professed an interest in religious music, particularly gospel, during adolescence. Sometime around age fifteen, Hooker left the Delta and went to Memphis, where he worked as an usher in a Beale Street theater and played his guitar on street corners for spare change. He returned to Mississippi for a short while but left again, this time for Cincinnati, where he sang in such gospel groups as the Fairfield Four and the Big Six.
Hooker moved to Detroit in 1943, hoping to cash in on assembly-line work there during the height of World War II. He wound up a janitor in an automotive plant and played clubs and house parties in Detroit's black neighborhoods. His recording career began in 1948 when he recorded his seminal blues number, "Boogie Chillen." Released on the Modern label, the song introduced Hooker's penchant for hypnotic, one-chord guitar ramblings and his deep, chilling vocals. "Boogie Chillen" was a throwback to prewar country blues and the antithesis of the slick rhythm & blues that filled out the charts in the years immediately following World War II. Incredibly, "Boogie Chillen" made it all the way to number 1 on the R&B charts in early 1949 and today is considered one of the all-time classic songs in the blues treasury.
Hooker recorded extensively between 1949 and 1952. His blues appeared on a variety of labels under a variety of pseudonyms, including Birmingham Sam, Delta John, Texas Slim, Johnny Lee, John Williams, Boogie Man, and John Lee Booker. Modern released Hooker's classic "Crawlin' Kingsnake"(111 k, 10 sec.) in 1949 and his biggest hit, "I'm in the Mood," in 1951, but other Hooker material surfaced on the Regal, Gone, Staff, and Sensation labels. Despite the name deception, he never changed his sound. Always his guitar work was dark and Delta-laced and deceptively simple in structure Hooker's guitar riffs were also supported by the rhythmic stomping of his feet, which gave many of his songs an increased intensity.
In 1971, Jim Morrison of the Doors recorded a version of Hooker's "Crawlin' King Snake"(112 k, 10 sec.)
Hooker recorded for Chess from 1952 to about 1954; during this time he also toured with Muddy Waters and performed on his own. As in the past, he continued to record for other labels, despite his Chess connection. Hooker songs appeared on the Gotham, Savoy, and Specialty labels, among others. But the label Hooker was most associated with in the late '50s and early '60s was Vee-Jay Records. Hooker stayed with the label until 1964. Two of Hooker's best-known hits from this period, "Dimples" (1956) and "Boom Boom" (1962) had a profound effect on the British blues scene. Oddly, his influence abroad in the early '60s was stronger than it was in the U.S. where he had returned to a solo acoustic blues style in order to take advantage of the growing folk-blues revival going on in cities like New York and San Francisco and on many college campuses.
Hooker continued to record and perform extensively throughout the 1960s; he was at home in either an acoustic or electric format. He toured England and continental Europe in 1962, and performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1960 and 1963 and at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964. He returned to England and tile Continent every year from 1964 to 1969, while back home in the States he played hip rock clubs like The Scene and Electric Circus in New York as more and more rock fans picked up on his blues.
Hooker left Detroit and moved to Oakland in 1970; that same year he cut the album Hooker 'n' Heat with blues-rock group Canned Heat and further solidified his standing with rock audiences. Hooker also continued to make his own records. From the early '70s came Endless Boogie, Never Get Out of These Blues Alive, and Free Beer and Chicken, to name just some of them. Much of the material on these albums was recycled songs or ideas and boogie rhythms that did little else except keep stores stocked with new John Lee Hooker vinyl.
By the late 1970s, Hooker seemed destined to fade into the blues woodwork. His sound had gone stale and interest in the blues was not yet what it would be later in the 1980s. But Hooker hung on, thanks to the continuous reissue of previously recorded material by labels such as Charly, GNP Crescendo, Chameleon, and Chess. In 1980 Hooker was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame.
Hooker's career continued to sag until 1989 when the Chameleon label released The Healer, an album of newly recorded material produced by Hooker's former guitarist Roy Rogers. The Healer included a guest appearance by longtime Hooker fan Bonnie Raitt, plus other cameos from Carlos Santana, Robert Cray, George Thorogood, and others. To the surprise of Hooker and everyone else, The Healer not only sold better than any other Hooker album had and earned many enthusiastic reviews, but it also won a Grammy Award for best blues recording. Suddenly Hooker was hot. In early 1990 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Later that year he was honored at a special tribute concert in New York' s Madison Square Garden that featured Raitt, Joe Cocker, Huey Lewis, Ry Cooder, Bo Diddley, Mick Fleetwood, Gregg Allman, Al Kooper, Johnny Winter, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, and others.
Before year's end, Hooker signed with Point Blank/Charisma Records, and for an encore he and Rogers cut Mr. Lucky, which, like its predecessor, was stocked with big-name guests (Collins, Cooder, Cray, Winter, Santana, Van Morrison, John Hammond, Jr., Keith Richards, and others). It, too, registered impressive sales and reviews, although on most tracks Hooker took a backseat to his admirers or else wasn't able to work up enough steam to get his husky vocals out in front of all the layers of instrumentation.
Hooker currently lives outside of Los Angeles. He continues to record and tour, and, with B.B. King, shares the honor of being elder statesman of the blues.
"Crawlin' King Snake" is from John Lee Hooker---The Ultimate Collection: 1948-1990 Copyright © Rino Records Inc., 1991.(originally released in 1949 under the Modern label)
"Crawlin' King Snake" is from The Doors---L.A. Woman Copyright © Elektra/Asylum Records 1971.
Son House
(born Eddie James, Jr.)
March 21, 1902 - October 19, 1988
Birthplace: Riverton, Mississippi
"Preachin' The Blues"(118 k, 10 sec.)
A major blues figure, Son House was one of the originators of the Mississippi Delta blues style. Along with Charley Patton and Willie Brown, House defined early Delta blues in the late 1920s and 1930s with his irregular, often furious guitar work and his intensely emotional vocals. So profound was House's blues style that he was the main influence of the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson as well as Muddy Waters.
House sang and played his guitar with compelling urgency and conviction. His brand of the blues was streaked with both preacher passion and raw, manly desires, which seemed to turn many of his songs into battles between good and evil, sin and redemption.
House was born on a Delta plantation. Early on he took up with the church and actually became a Baptist pastor by the time he turned twenty. But he straddled the sacred and secular worlds, which led to troubles with women and alcohol. He had also discovered the power of the blues. After spending time in Louisiana in the early 1920s, House returned to the Delta in 1926 and learned how to play guitar. He worked local juke joints and house parties until 1928, when he shot and killed a man, allegedly in self-defense. House was sent to Parchman Farm, an infamous Mississippi penitentiary, that year. A year later, a judge reexamined his case and ordered him released from prison.
House left Clarksdale for Lula, Mississippi, where he met Charley Patton and Willie Brown. He performed and traveled with them to Grafton, Wisconsin, in 1930, where all three blues guitarists recorded sides for the Paramount label. One of the songs House recorded, "Preachin' The Blues"(118 k, 10 sec.), was a powerful, personalized account of how the blues stole his soul away from the Baptist church.
House continued to perform on occasion with Patton and Brown until Patton's death in 1934. For the remainder of his time in Mississippi, House worked jukes and dances with Brown and as a solo artist. In 1941, Alan Lomax recorded Son House for the Library of Congress. Lomax returned to Mississippi in 1942 and recorded House a second time. The following year House moved to Rochester, New York, and simply disappeared from the blues scene until 1964. Hailed as the greatest surviving original Delta bluesman, House became a hero to the young, white, folk-blues crowd of the early '60s. He performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival; a year later House played Carnegie Hall and signed a recording contract with CBS Records. His album Father of the Folk Blues (later renamed Death Letter) was a critical success and led to appearances at many of the major folk and blues festivals in the U.S. and Europe. In 1969 he was the subject of a blues documentary, called simply Son House.
By 1971 House fell into ill health. Although he did perform at the occasional festival in the early 1970s, his blues career had come to end. In 1976 he moved to Detroit. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980. Son House died in 1988.
"Preachin' The Blues" is from Son House---Father Of The Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions Copyright © Sony Music Entertainment, Inc., 1992.
Blind Lemon Jefferson
(aka Deacon L.J. Bates)
July 1897 - December 1929
Birthplace: Couchman, Texas
"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"(115 k, 10 sec.)
Blind Lemon Jefferson was one of the most influential country bluesmen the genre has known, as well as one of its first commercially successful recording artists. Jefferson's recording career was short; his nearly one hundred titles were all recorded between 1926 and 1929. But in that time he became one of the most popular male blues singers in black America. His success enabled other male blues artists to secure recording contracts in an era that was dominated by female classic blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ida Cox.
Little of substance is known about Jefferson's personal life. One of seven children, he was born blind in the late 1800s in East Texas and, most likely, learned to play guitar as a means of scraping out a meager living. Jefferson's handicap didn't hamper his artistry or his resourcefulness as an itinerant bluesman. In 1917, after performing at house parties, picnics, and dances around Wortham in central Texas, Jefferson moved to the Deep Ellum section of Dallas, where he played on street corners for spare change. Jefferson's reputation as singer-guitarist grew to the point where he attracted regular patrons when he played, and he earned enough money through tin-cup offerings to support a wife and child.
Although Jefferson is known as a bluesman, he also sang and played religious hymns, spirituals, work songs, and folk tunes in the tradition of a Southern songster. His vocal style included many of the mannerisms that would later define blues singing, including an elastic, thinly veneered vocal whine. But it was Jefferson's guitar style that had the biggest impact on his contemporaries and future generations of bluesmen. Jefferson constructed intricate melodic structures punctuated with irregular phrasing that often expanded standard tempo patterns. He also used, to great effect, single-string arpeggios, repeating bass runs on the lower guitar strings, and interesting jazz-like improvisations, which gave his style wonderful color and charisma.
Jefferson was also a first-rate songwriter and permanently altered the relationship that blues singers of the time had with professional songwriters. Before Jefferson, nearly all of the female classic blues singers relied on songs written by outsiders. Jefferson recorded many of his own songs. Some were admittedly take-offs on traditional folk-blues songs, but at his composing best, Jefferson artfully penned vivid lyrical accounts of early l900s black culture in the South, especially Texas.
Part of Jefferson's early fame stemmed from his regular travels beyond Dallas. There are accounts of him performing in Oklahoma, the Mississippi Delta, Atlanta, and the Carolinas. But it wasn't until 1925, when Jefferson was recommended to Paramount Records by Sammy Price, a Dallas piano player/record store employee, and was invited to Chicago to record, that he had his biggest impact. Jefferson recorded blues and spirituals, the latter under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. His recording success led Paramount to search for other male blues singer-guitarists. In late 1926 they discovered Blind Blake, who along with Jefferson provided Paramount with the two biggest-selling country bluesmen of the decade. Jefferson also recorded some sides for the Okeh label in 1927, including "Match Box Blues" and "That Black Snake Moan."
Jefferson recorded a number of other self-penned classics. "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"(115 k, 10 sec.) was an early blues spiritual tune that has been interpreted by countless blues musicians and has since become a permanent fixture in the country blues songbook. Jefferson also cut a number of East Texas folk-blues standards, including "Jack O'Diamonds" about the perils of gambling, "Boll Weevil Blues" about the dreaded insect that ravaged the East Texas cotton crop in the early twentieth century, and a revamped "See See Rider," which Jefferson called "Corrina Blues."
Blind Lemon Jefferson died just as the first great blues era was coming to a close. The fact that no official death certificate has ever been found has given rise to numerous accounts of his passing in December 1929. The most colorful had Jefferson freezing to death in a Chicago snowstorm. Another account blamed a heart attack for his demise. It's quite possible that Jefferson suffered a heart attack during a Chicago snowstorm.
Because Paramount's records were widely distributed both in the North and South, Jefferson's blues style was well-known among blues musicians. Many artists were influenced by his striking style, including a young T-Bone Walker, who would walk with Jefferson to his favorite Dallas street corner in his Deep Ellum days, and who carried elements of the Jefferson style of blues guitar into electric blues in the late '30s and '40s. Other Jefferson disciples include Lightnin Hopkins, B.B. King, and a number of guitarists from the Virginia Piedmont region, including Rev. Blind Gary Davis and Blind Willie McTell. Blind Lemon Jefferson was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980.
"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" is from Blind Lemon Jefferson--King Of The Country Blues Copyright © Yazoo Records Inc.,1990.
Robert Johnson
May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938
Birthplace: Hazelhurst, Mississippi
"Stones In My Passway."(108 k, 10 sec.)
Robert Johnson is one of the most celebrated figures in blues history. Although he died when he was just twenty-seven years old, his impact on blues culture and blues mythology, as well as his influence on the development of blues guitar styles, has been substantial to say the least. A half-century after his death, Johnson still possessed the power and magnetism to play a major role in the latest blues revival. In 1990, Columbia Records kicked off its prestigious Roots 'n' Blues Series with The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson, a two-disc boxed set with extensive liner notes, rare photos, and a fresh view of his music. According to series producer Larry Cohn, the set was expected to sell some 20,000 copies. Incredibly, it sold nearly a half-million units. It also won a Grammy Award, inspired a number of Robert Johnson cover stories in the music press, launched a brand new fascination with Johnson's music and his contribution to blues guitar, and hastened the reissuing of classic blues albums on compact disc by dozens of other companies.
If Robert Johnson had never been born, the blues might have seen fit to invent him, as his story has become the archetype of blues life. It reads so much like a film that it inevitably became one. Based loosely on the always sketchy details of his life, the mid-1980s movie Crossroads is something no true blues fan would ever consider anything more than mere entertainment. But that the Johnson legacy was compelling enough to warrant a full-length feature film tells us much about the impact he has had on our view of the blues.
Johnson's recording catalog adds up to a grand total of only twenty-nine tracks; it is criminally lean when compared to those of such blues giants as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin Hopkins, and others. Yet most blues scholars and critics agree that there is more than enough musical evidence available to proclaim Johnson a musical genius, while his lyrics have been analyzed more closely perhaps than those of any other blues composer.
According to the myth, Johnson obtained his amazing guitar skills by selling his soul to the Devil. (That Johnson wrote songs about the Devil and explored in his music the fight of good against evil strengthened the myth, which endured after his death and grew larger as the years passed.) Aside from this Faustian explanation, we know little about how Johnson came to acquire his compelling skills, as both a songwriter and guitarist, in such a remarkably brief time.
He certainly had the physical tools to forge an unusual blues guitar style. A careful look at the photo that appears on the box of The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson reveals the guitarist to have had extraordinarily large hands. Some of the chordal movements and note selections that grace his songs are practically impossible to achieve with normal-size fingers. Yet this physical trait doesn't explain where Johnson's inspiration came from.
Some of it can be indirectly traced and some perhaps inferred. Johnson's use of walking bass notes probably came from hearing first-generation boogie-woogie piano players. He certainly must have learned about guitar tone and texture from listening to Lonnie Johnson. And Delta greats such as Charley Patton, Willie Brown, and Son House undoubtedly influenced his approach to the slide guitar. With all the traveling Johnson did in his short life, surely he picked up melodic and rhythmic ideas from other bluesmen he met. Yet what made all these influences jell was his blues passion and deeply rooted intensity. In the end, these are the things that made Johnson's guitar work truly special.
A few historians believe the influence of Johnson's guitar playing has been overstated. While his style has worked its way into modern blues and rock and has touched Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Johnny Shines, John Hammond, Jr., Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards, to name a few prominent blues and rock guitarists, bluesmen other than Johnson have exerted far more sweeping influences. T-Bone Walker and B.B. King, for instance, have had a greater impact on the course of blues guitar history. Nonetheless, Johnson remains a vital source of inspiration, not to mention frustration, for those who seek to take blues guitar to a new, more spectacular level. Few other blues guitarists are held in higher esteem. It is also safe to say that no one who has surfaced since his passing has been able to match his unconventional guitar accomplishments, save, perhaps, Jimi Hendrix.
Johnson was born illegitimate in 1911 to Julia Dodds and Noah Johnson. When he was three or four, Johnson's mother sent him to live with her husband, Charles Dodds, who was residing in Memphis and had taken a new name, Charles Spencer. As a youth, Johnson was known as Robert Spencer and Robert Dodds, but when he learned the identity of his real father, he assumed the name Johnson.
Before he absorbed the rudiments of the guitar, mostly by watching his older brother Charles play, Johnson had taught himself how to play harmonica. He learned, too, from watching Son House, Charley Patton, and Willie Brown play guitar at Delta picnics and parties. Not much is known about Johnson's personal life other than that by 1930 he had married and lost his wife, who died during childbirth, and that he had decided to become a bluesman. Johnson remarried in 1931, but spent most of his time wandering the Delta. Around 1933 or so, Johnson met up again with Son House and Willie Brown. What they heard Johnson play on guitar startled them.
In an amazingly short time, Johnson had turned into a blues guitar master, hence the myth that he made a deal with the Devil. Johnson's reputation as a guitarist spread as he worked as an itinerant bluesman, roaming the Delta. He also traveled to Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and even to New York. Occasionally he traveled with fellow bluesman Johnny Shines and often met David Honeyboy Edwards and Robert Jr. Lockwood on the road. Most of the time, however, he traveled alone.
Johnson's only two recording sessions occurred just a couple of years before his death. The first session took place in November 1936 in a San Antonio, Texas, hotel room. During the three-day session Johnson cut sixteen sides for the American Record Company, including "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom," "Sweet Home Chicago," "Terraplane Blues," "Cross Road Blues," "Come on in My Kitchen," and "Walkin' Blues" -all acknowledged classics.
The second session occurred in June 1937 in a Dallas warehouse, producing still more Johnson classics, such as "Traveling Riverside Blues," "Love in Vain Blues," "Hell Hound on My Trail," "Me and the Devil Blues" and "Stones In My Passway."(108 k, 10 sec.) After this last session, Johnson resumed his wandering ways, ultimately winding up in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he was poisoned with strychnine-laced whiskey after a brief fling with the wife of a local juke-joint owner. Three days later he died.
Johnson was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
"Stones In My Passway" is from Robert Johnson -- The Complete Recordings Copyright © CBS Records Inc., 1990. Words and music by Robert Johnson. © (1978) 1990, 1991 King of Spades Music
All rights reserved.
Tommy Johnson
1896 - November 1, 1956
Birthplace: Terry, Mississippi
Tommy Johnson was one of the most influential blues artists working in the Mississippi Delta in the l920s and 1930s. Only famed bluesmen Charley Patton and Son House commanded greater respect and had more of an impact than he did. With a full-bodied voice that could be jacked up to an eerie falsetto and a compelling guitar style that, though rather limited, evoked shivering blues figures, Johnson helped define the early Delta blues sound. Had he recorded more-he made about a dozen recordings during his entire career-his status as a pioneering bluesman undoubtedly would be greater today with blues fans.
As it stands, much of the Johnson legacy concerns his live performances, his rowdy womanizing, his powerful drinking (when whiskey wasn't available, Johnson reportedly drank Sterno, denatured alcohol, or even shoe polish), and his spooky flirtations with the Devil. Johnson repeatedly told friends and admirers that he acquired his blues talent by selling his soul to the Devil. At times, Johnson did indeed seem like a man possessed. Taking a cue from Patton, Johnson often played his guitar behind his neck and back and made histrionics as much a part of his performance as his music. Johnson had a profound impact on Howlin' Wolf, who took Johnson's attention to showmanship to the next degree in the post-World War II years.
Johnson was born circa 1896 in southern Mississippi. By the time he was a teen, he had learned the rudiments of the guitar and had headed north to the Delta region, where he met Patton and Patton's longtime friend and musical companion Willie Brown, both of whom influenced the way in which Johnson played and sang the blues. Johnson began working with Patton and Brown in Delta jukes and at plantation dances. Later in the 1920s, Johnson worked with Charlie McCoy, Ishman Bracey, and Rubin Lacy in the Jackson, Mississippi, area.
Johnson's recording career lasted but two years, from 1928 to 1930, during which time he cut sides for the Victor and Paramount labels. Among the songs that have since become blues standards are "Big Road Blues" and "Canned Heat Blues," the latter tune a haunting, autobiographical account of his alcohol addiction. In the 1960s, the California blues-rock group Canned Heat named itself after this song. Johnson continued to work Jackson jukes and parties into the 1950s, early on influencing Robert Johnson (not believed to be a relation) and countless other young bluesmen in the process, though his acute alcohol problems prevented any serious attempt at expanding his career outside Mississippi. Johnson died in 1956. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1987.
Janis Joplin
January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970
Birthplace: Port Arthur, Texas
"Ball And Chain" (124 k 11 sec.)
"Me and Bobby McGee" ( 115 k, 10 sec.)
Janis Joplin was one of the greatest white female blues singers of all time. Although she came from the same mid-'60s San Francisco rock scene that spawned bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, Joplin's screaming, gut-wrenching vocals were firmly based in the blues. Joplin frequently cited Bessie Smith as her chief inspiration and influence.
Joplin lived the life of a pained blueswoman bent on self-destruction. Alcohol and drug excess sapped her talent and eventually killed her. Her sexual promiscuity led to feelings of inadequacy and bouts with depression. She experienced difficulty in handling her growing fame. In the end, Joplin funneled all her problems into her music, which made it some of the rawest, most emotionally intense of the late-'60s rock period.
Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, a town noted for its blues heritage. As a child, Joplin was fond of art and poetry and discovered both folk music and the blues. She sang in coffeehouses and folk clubs in Houston and Austin before going to California in 1965. Her initial stay on the West Coast was a short one; the following year she returned to Texas and began singing in an Austin country band. By luck, Joplin heard of a San Francisco blues-rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, that was looking for a lead singer. Joplin left Texas for a second time and moved to San Francisco, where, with Big Brother, her career took off.
Joplin and Big Brother released their self-titled debut album on the Mainstream label in early 1967 and performed at the Monterey Pop Festival that June along with other soon-to-be-famous San Francisco rock bands. The success of Joplin and Big Brother's performance landed the group a recording contract with CBS Records. Big Brother's major label debut, Cheap Thrills, became a best-seller in 1968, buoyed by the success of "Piece of My Heart" and Big Mama Thornton's classic "Ball And Chain" (124 k 11 sec.) which showcased Joplin's tortured blues vocals.
Joplin left Big Brother after Cheap Thrills to form her own Kozmic Blues Band. In 1969 Joplin and the group released the album I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again, Mama, which included one of Joplin's trademark numbers, "Try Just a Little Bit Harder)." The Kozmic Blues Band was, however, a short-lived group. Joplin dissolved it and formed the Full Tilt Boogie Band, with whom she recorded her most-remembered album, Pearl. It included the number 1 hit "Me and Bobby McGee" ( 115 k, 10 sec.) Joplin didn't live to share in the album's success. She died of a heroin overdose in 1970. Pearl was released posthumously.
"Ball And Chain" and "Me and Bobby McGee" are from Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits Copyright © CBS Inc., 1972
Albert King
(born Albert Nelson)
April 25, 1923 - December 21, 1992
Birthplace: Indianola, Mississippi
Bluesman Albert King was one of the premier electric guitar stylists of the post-World War II period. By playing left-handed and holding his guitar upside-down (with the strings set for a right-handed player), and by concentrating on tone and intensity more than flash, King fashioned over his long career, a sound that was both distinctive and highly influential. He was a master of the single-string solo and could bend strings to produce a particularly tormented blues sound that set his style apart from his contemporaries. A number of prominent artists,from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Mike Bloomfield and Stevie Ray Vaughan, borrowed heavily from King's guitar style.
King was also the first major blues guitarist to cross over into modem soul;his mid- and late 1960s recordings for the Stax label, cut with the same great session musicians who played on the recordings of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave,Eddie Floyd, and others, appealed to his established black audience while broadening his appeal with rock fans. Along with B.B. King (no relation, though at times Albert suggested otherwise) and Muddy Waters, King helped nurture a white interest in blues when the music needed it most to survive.
King was born in Mississippi and taught himself how to play on a homemade guitar. Inspired by Blind Lemon Jefferson, King quit singing in a family gospel group and took up the blues. He worked around Osceola, Arkansas, with a group called the In the Groove Boys before migrating north and ending up in Gary,Indiana, in the early 1950s. For a while, King played drums behind bluesman Jimmy Reed. In 1953, King convinced Parrot label owner Al Benson to record him as a blues singer and guitarist. That year King cut "Bad Luck Blues" and"Be on Your Merry Way" for Parrot. Because King received little in the way of financial remuneration for the record, he left Parrot and eventually moved to St. Louis, where he recorded for the Bobbin and the King labels. In 1959 he had a minor hit on Bobbin with "I'm a Lonely Man." King's biggest release, "Don't Throw Your Love on Me So Strong," made it to number 14 on the R&B charts in 1961.
King didn't become a major blues figure until after he signed with Stax Records in 1966. Working with producer-drummer Al Jackson, Jr., guitarist Steve Cropper, keyboards ace Booker T. Jones, and bass player Donald "Duck"Dunn-aka Booker T. and the MGs King created a blues sound that was laced with Memphis soul strains. Although the blues were dominant on songs such as"Laundromat Blues" and the classic "Born Under A Bad Sign", the tunes had Memphis soul underpinnings that gave King his crossover appeal. Not only was he the first blues artist to play the legendary San Francisco rock venue the Fillmore West, but he was also on the debut bill, sharing the stage opening night in1968 with Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall. King went on to become a regular at the Fillmore; his album Live Wire/Blues Power was recorded there in 1968.King was also one of the first bluesman to record with a symphony orchestra: in1969 he performed with the St. Louis Symphony, triumphantly bringing together the blues and classical music, if only for a fleeting moment.
During the 1970s King toured extensively, often playing to rock and soul crowds. He left Stax in 1974 to record for independent labels like Tomato and Fantasy. King was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983.He continued touring throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, playing festivals and concerts, often with B.B. King. He died of a heart attack in 1992, just prior to starting a major European tour.
"Born Under A Bad Sign" is from Albert King - Wednesday Night In San Francisco Copyright © Stax Records Inc., 1990.
B.B. King
(born Riley B. King)
September 16, 1925 - Present
Birthplace: Indianola, Mississippi
"Three O'Clock Blues" (116 k, 10 sec.)
"When Love Comes To Town" (116 k, 10 sec.)
"The Blues? It's the mother of American music. That's what it is--the Source."----B.B. King
Since the late 1960s, when rock and pop audiences discovered him and his refined, majestic brand of the blues, guitarist and singer B.B. King has been the music's most successful concert artist and its most consistently recognized ambassador. He has been bestowed with more awards and honorary degrees than any other bluesman and has made the cause of preserving the blues his lifetime work. Almost singlehandedly he brought the blues out from the fringe of the American music spectrum and into its mainstream. Thanks to King, blues is now performed in the most prestigious venues and in front of audiences whose introduction to the blues often stems back to the first time they heard a B.B. King record.
King has also had a profound effect on the inner workings of rock & roll. Few, if any, bluesmen have exerted more influence on rock guitarists than King. Greats such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, along with Johnny Winter, Billy Gibbons, and Stevie Ray Vaughan were all touched by King to some degree. As for blues guitarists, virtually every major stylist from the postwar period has, in some capacity, been influenced by the King style. A member of the Blues Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, B.B. King has continued to be a vital performer and prolific recording artist despite advancing age and health problems. His graciousness and articulation, especially when discussing the meaning and significance of the blues, have done much to build respect for the music and its culture.
King's guitar style is essentially a consolidation of deep Mississippi blues and jazz, coupled with strains of gospel, rock, and pop. A trained ear can detect traces of Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker, and Lonnie Johnson in King's guitar solos, as well as those of jazz guitar legends Charlie Christian, Eddie Lang, and Django Reinhardt. King is the acknowledged master of the single-string guitar style and the technique called string bending, which is employed to embellish the emotional intensity of a guitar passage.
King is not a flashy or busy guitarist, yet his solos sting rather than soothe the senses. He often uses vibrato to accent notes and phrases, and he gives his guitar passages plenty of room to breathe within the context of a song's arrangement. At his best, King pushes his guitar solos to become an extension of his voice, so that the result is a practically seamless blues presentation. If there's been any criticism of King and his guitar style, it usually centers on his work being too slick and too neat. However, there is no denying the dynamics and tension that run through his best work. What King has done more than anything else is elevate the blues guitar solo to a high art. He has taken the blues guitar out of smokey clubs and funky roadhouses and relocated it to a more sophisticated setting, namely the concert stage.
Born in Mississippi, King's earliest interest in music came from the church, which is where he learned to sing gospel music. After being taught a few chords on the guitar by the minister of his church, King's interest started to extend beyond just singing. He began listening to guitar-playing bluesmen more intently and was moved by the jazz guitar work of Charlie Christian. As a young man King was a Mississippi Delta farmhand and tractor driver, working the fields during the week and playing music on weekends.
After World War II, King went to Memphis and stayed with his cousin, bluesman Bukka White, before returning to the Delta in late 1946. He did farm work for one more year before leaving it for good. In 1947, King moved to Memphis. Me had heard harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) perform on West Memphis radio station KWEM; King went to see Williamson and requested work. Williamson had him perform on his program, which led to other work for King on Memphis station WDIA, hawking an alcohol-based tonic called Pepticon and playing and singing blues songs for ten minutes every day.
In 1949, King became a full-time disc jockey on WDIA. Calling himself the Beale Street Blues Boy, later shortened to B.B., King got a blues and jazz education by listening to the records he spun on the air. He also gained some local fame as an on-the-air personality, which he translated into performing dates in Beale Street blues clubs. King worked with numerous musicians, including Robert Lockwood, Jr., who helped him broaden his blues view by showing him uncommon chords and jazz licks, and the Beale Streeters, an informal group of Memphis musicians ( Rosco Gordon, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Earl Forest, Johnny Ace, etc.) that were lumped together for broadcasting and advertising purposes.
King's recording career began in 1949 when he cut four sides for the Nashville-based Bullet label. None of the songs made much of an impression on black record buyers. But in 1951 he recorded at Sam Phillips's Sun studio for Modern RPM and then, later in the year, at the Memphis YMCA. One of the songs from the latter session, "Three O'Clock Blues" (116 k, 10 sec.) launched King to blues stardom. The record lodged itself in the number 1 slot on the R&B charts and stayed there for seventeen weeks. King's startling success enabled him to go on tour and play as far north as the Apollo Theater in New York City. There were three more number 1 hits: "You Know I Love You" in 1952, "Please Love Me" in 1953, and "You Upset Me Baby" in 1954, all on the RPM label.
During the early and mid- 1950s, King recorded prolifically, as he was to do throughout most of his career. Many of his best recordings were not original songs but interpretations of songs penned by other blues composers such as Lowell Fulson, who wrote "Three O'Clock Blues," as well as Memphis Slim, who wrote "Everyday I Have the Blues," which King turned into a hit in 1955. From Tampa Red, King got "Sweet Little Angel," one of his signature pieces. Kingwas able to breathe new life into these songs and others with his increasingly sculptured guitar work and his powerful vocals.
Another factor in King's success was the sound of his band and the arrangements they used. King had been greatly influenced by the big band blues sound of Count Basie and Duke Ellington and wanted it for his own band, which usually consisted of between eleven and fourteen members. Under the astute direction of West Coast arranger Maxwell Davis, who possessed a keen understanding of how to meld horns into a blues framework and give the resulting sound a sharp sense of swing, King's band had at its disposal some of the best big band blues arrangements ever created. So well crafted were they that King continued to use many of them right into the 1980s.
Throughout the 1950s King seemed to finish one tour only to begin another. In 1956, he reputedly did 342 shows. When not performing, he was recording. However, as the '60s dawned, King's popularity began to wane. Black interest in the blues began to shrink, thanks to the advent of soul and the more urban sounds of R&B, and whites were more fascinated with country bluesmen than a full-fledged blues band of the kind that King led. In 1962 King switched to the ABC/Paramount label with the hope of cultivating a new sound and attracting a new audience. It didn't work; though King's guitar work had never sounded stronger, his blues framework seemed, to some blues fans, stale. Nonetheless, in 1962, King recorded Live at the Regal, an album many blues critics contend is the greatest blues recording ever made. King's performance was classic; his guitar gushed with emotional fervor and his vocal delivery was impeccable. Yet the album's critical success did little to push King's career forward.
In the late '60s, B.B. King finally found a new and appreciative audience: rock fans. He began playing rock venues like the Fillmore (East and West) and rock festivals and opened concerts for the Rolling Stones. Although not a gritty blues guitarist, the kind that most rock fans favored, King was regarded as a blues guitar master by the rock crowd. King solidified his standing within the realm of rock and pop with the success of his version of the Roy Hawkins tune "The Thrill Is Gone" in 1970. The record made it all the way to number 15 on the pop charts (and number 3 on the R&B charts) and reignited interest in King in black music circles.
After "The Thrill Is Gone," King became an elder statesman of the blues. He carried the music through the 1970s on the whole, bad times for the blues with routinely inspiring live performances. He continued to make albums, but King's reluctance or inability to expand his sound or even probe new ideas made them only mildly interesting, except to serious blues guitar listeners and longtime King fans. During the decade King toured Europe regularly and played Las Vegas. He appeared on network television and survived the disco craze at the end of the l970s. King continued to record and perform through the 1980s, adding Atlantic City to his list of performance locales. With the passing of Muddy Waters in 1983, King was looked upon more and more as dean of the blues.
King struck a responsive note with a new generation of rock fans when he forged a friendship with Irish supergroup U2 and appeared on its acclaimed album Rattle and Hum in 1988. His guitar and vocal performance on the song "When Love Comes To Town" (116 k, 10 sec.) proved that King could still belt out the blues in grand fashion. Although King now suffers from diabetes, his concert schedule remains packed solid and he still manages to make new records. His 1991 album, There Is Always One More Time, on MCA Records, was recorded with L.A. session musicians and contained a conscious, though uneven, attempt by King to work his blues into contemporary pop.
King was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. A CD box set compilation of some of King's best work, called King of the Blues, was released in 1992.
"Three O'Clock Blues" is from B.B. King--Singin' the Blues/The Blues Copyright © Virgin Records America, Inc., 1991.
"When Love Comes To Town" is from U2--Rattle and Hum Copyright © Island Records Ltd., 1988.
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