(Guitar, vocals, 1926–83) The highly theatrical Joseph Benjamin ‘J.B.’ Hutto sang in the Golden Crowns Gospel Singers as a child and made his first records with his backup band, the Hawks, in 1954. Hutto then left the music business but returned, rejuvenated, 10 years later. He toured with various incarnations of the Hawks ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1929–67) J.B. Lenoir was born in Monticello, Mississippi; his parents were farmers as well as musicians. He learned to play the guitar at the age of eight and left home in the early 1940s to work with Rice Miller and Elmore James, before settling in Chicago in 1949 and making his recording debut in ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1970–present) Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen (guitar, vocals) and Jack Casady (bass) – together with drummer Bob Steeler – formed Hot Tuna in San Francisco in order to satisfy their interest in acoustic blues. After an eponymous debut album, the group went electric, added fiddler Papa John Creach and expanded its range to become a staple ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1975–present) Chicago native Ed Williams learned slide guitar from his uncle, renowned bluesman J.B. Hutto. During the early years of the Blues Imperials, flamboyant frontman Ed continued working at his day job in a local car wash, but by the early 1980s the band had established a substantial regional following. Their 1986 Alligator Records ...
Chicago blues is a raw, rough-and-tumble music, defined by slashing, Delta-rooted electric slide guitars, raunchy-toned harmonicas overblown into handheld microphones to the point of distortion, uptempo shuffled rummers, insistently walking bass players and declamatory, soulful vocalists who imbued the tunes with Southern gospel fervour. It became a universally recognized sound by the 1960s, ...
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David Bowie
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