Part VIa: Chicago/Detroit Blues:
Name Birth year Death year
Luther Allison (August 17, 1939 – August 12, 1997) was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas and moved with his family, at age twelve, to Chicago in 1951. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he began hanging outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform. He played with Howlin' Wolf's band and backed James Cotton.
His big break came in 1957 when Howlin' Wolf invited Allison to the stage. Freddie King took Allison under his wing and after King got his big record deal, Allison took over King's house band gig on Chicago's west side. He worked the club circuit throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s and recorded his first single in 1965. Allison was signed to the Delmark Records label in 1967 and released his debut album Love Me Mama the following year. A well-received set at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival resulted in his being asked to perform there each of the next three years. He also toured nationwide and, in 1972, was signed to Motown Records, the first and one of the few blues artists to do so. By the mid 1970s he began touring Europe and moved to France in 1977. Allison was known for his powerful concert performances, lengthy soulful guitar solos and crowd walking with his Gibson Les Paul. Allison lived briefly during this period in Peoria Illinois, where he signed briefly with Rumble Records in Peoria Illinois which resulted in two Live Recordings "Gonna Be a Live One in Here Tonight" produced by Bill Knight and Power Wire Blues produced by George Faber and Jeffrey P. Hess. Allison played the "Bar circuit" in the USA during this period, spending 8 months per year in Europe at high profile venues, including Montreaux Jazz Festival. In 1992, he played as a duo with legendary French rock'n'roll star Johnny Hallyday for 18 shows in Paris, also playing during the intermission.
Allison's manager, and European agent, Thomas Ruf founded the label Ruf Records in 1994. Signing with Ruf Records, Allison launched a comeback in association with Alligator Records. Alligator founder, Bruce Iglauer, convinced Allison to return to the United States. The album “Soul Fixin' Man” was recorded and released in 1994, and Allison toured the U.S. and Canada. Allison won four W.C. Handy Awards in 1994. With the James Solberg Band backing him, non-stop touring and the release of Blue Streak (featuring song "Cherry Red Wine"), Allison continued to earn more Handys and gain wider recognition. Allison scored a host of Living Blues Awards and was featured on the cover pages of major blues publications.
In the middle of his summer of 1997 tour, Allison checked into a hospital for dizziness and loss of coordination. It was discovered that he had a tumor on his lung that had metastasized to his brain. In and out of a coma, Allison died on August 12, 1997, five days before his 58th birthday, in Madison, Wisconsin. His album Reckless had just been released. His son Bernard Allison, at one time a member of his band, is now a solo recording artist.
He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times called him "The Bruce Springsteen of the blues".
Allison is buried at Washington Memory Gardens Cemetery in Homewood, Illinois.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Allison
Luther Allison 1939 1997
Lefty Bates (March 9, 1920 – April 7, 2007) was an American Chicago blues guitarist. He led the Lefty Bates Combo, and variously worked with the El Dorados, the Flamingos, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Etta James, the Aristo-Kats, the Hi-De-Ho Boys, the Moroccos, the Impressions, and a latter day version of the Ink Spots. A regular on the Chicago blues scene, Bates major work was as a session musician on a multitude of recordings made in the 1950s and 1960s.
Bates was married to well-known area club dancer Mary Cole Bates, who died in 2001.
By the time the majority of his studio work had ceased, Bates led a latter-day version of the Ink Spots in the 1970s and beyond.
Bates died of a arteriosclerosis in Chicago in April 2007, aged 87.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lefty_Bates
Lefty Bates 1920 2007
Eddie "Guitar" Burns (born February 8, 1928, Belzoni, Mississippi) is an American Detroit blues guitarist, harmonica player, singer and songwriter. His career has spanned seven decades, and in terms of Detroit bluesmen, Burns is deemed second only in stature to John Lee Hooker.
Burn's father was a sharecropper who performed as a singer in medicine shows, although Burns was mainly raised by his grandparents. He was self taught in the harmonica and made his first guitar.
In 1989 Burns released an album titled Detroit on Blue Suit Records, where his ability on both guitar and harmonica were displayed. In February 1992, Burns appeared alongside Jack Owens, Bud Spires, and Lonnie Pitchford at the seventh annual New York Winter Blues Festival. By 1994, Burns had been granted the Michigan Heritage Award.
His brother, Jimmy Burns, is a soul blues musician, who lives in Chicago, and played guitar on Burns 2002 album Snake Eyes. Burns most recent offering was Second Degree Burns, released when he was 77 years of age.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_%22Guitar%22_Burns
Eddie "Guitar" Burns 1928
The Butler Twins were an American Detroit blues and electric blues duo, comprising the twins Clarence (January 21, 1942 – December 22, 2003) and Curtis Butler (January 21, 1942 – April 9, 2004). Long time, semi-professional performers in the local blues scene in Detroit, they gained international recognition following the recording of three albums in the late 1990s. Their best known track was "The Butler's Boogie”.
Clarence and Curtis Butler were born seconds apart, and grew up in Florence, Alabama. Their father, Willie "Butch" Butler, was noteworthy as a local guitar player, and with his harmonica playing partner, Raymond Edwards, both proved useful tutors. By the age of seven the twins were proficient enough musicians to win a talent contest, and played in the abandoned house where W. C. Handy once lived. They were in the middle of a family of sixteen siblings, and the twins put together their first musical ensemble at the age of 14, and two years later started to tour the Southern United States.
The Butler Twins were granted Music Achiever status by the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
Clarence Butler died after a heart attack on December 22, 2003, in Hamtramck, Michigan. Curtis Butler died just over three months later on April 9, 2004.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butler_Twins
The Butler Twins 1942 2003 /2004
Paul Butterfield (17 December 1942 – 4 May 1987) was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival. He died of drug-related heart failure.
The son of a lawyer, Paul Butterfield was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was born and raised Jewish. He attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private school associated with the University of Chicago. After studying classical flute with Walfrid Kujala of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a teenager, he developed a love for the blues harmonica, and hooked up with white, blues-loving, University of Chicago physics student Elvin Bishop. The pair started hanging around black blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and Otis Rush. Butterfield and Bishop soon formed a band with Jerome Arnold and Sam Lay, both hired away from the touring band of Howlin' Wolf. In 1963, the racially mixed quartet was made the house band at Big John's, a folk club in the Old Town district on Chicago's north side. Butterfield was still underage (as was guitarist Mike Bloomfield.)
Paul Butterfield died of peritonitis due to drug use and heavy drinking on May 4, 1987 Los Angeles, California. Before then, Butterfield tenor sax player Ruben Riera had taken him to Bellevue Hospital in New York City for emergency surgery for perforated intestine. He died at his home in North Hollywood, California. A month earlier, he was featured on B.B. King & Friends, a filmed concert that also included Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan and Eric Clapton. Its subsequent release was dedicated to Butterfield in memoriam.
In 2005, the Paul Butterfield Fund and Society was founded. It petitions for Butterfield's inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Butterfield
Paul Butterfield 1942 1987
John Henry Barbee (November 14, 1905 – November 3, 1964) was an American blues singer and guitarist. He was born by the name of William George Tucker in Henning, Tennessee, United States, and then changed his name with the commencement of his recording career to reflect his favorite folk song,
"The Ballad of John Henry".
Barbee toured in the 1930s throughout the American South singing and playing slide guitar. He teamed up with Big Joe Williams, and later on, with Sunnyland Slim in Memphis, Tennessee. Travelling down to Mississippi he also came across Sonny Boy Williamson I, and played with him off and on for several years. He released two sides on the Vocalion label in 1939 ("Six Weeks Old Blues" / "God Knows I Can't Help It"). The record sold well enough to cause Vocalion to call on Barbee again, but by that time he had left his last known whereabouts in Arkansas. Barbee explained that this sudden move was due to his evading the law for shooting and killing his girlfriend's lover. He later found out that he had only injured the man, but by the time this was discovered, Barbee had moved on from making a career out of playing music.
Barbee did not show up again in the music industry until the early 1960s, whereby this time the blues revival was in full swing. Willie Dixon searched out for Barbee, and found him working as an ice cream server in Chicago, Illinois. In 1964 he joined the American Folk Blues Festival on an European tour with fellow blues players, including Lightnin' Hopkins and Howlin' Wolf.
In a case of tragic circumstances, Barbee returned to the United States and used the money from the tour to purchase his first automobile. Only ten days after purchasing the car, he accidentally ran over and killed a man. He was locked up in a Chicago jail, and died there of a heart attack a few days later, November 3, 1964, 11 days before his 59th birthday.
John Henry is interred in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.
On May 11, 2010 the third annual White Lake Blues Festival took place at the Howmet Playhouse Theater in Whitehall, Michigan. The concert was organized by executive producer, Steve Salter, of the nonprofit organization Killer Blues in order to raise monies to honor Barbee's unmarked grave with a headstone. The event was a success, and a stone was placed in June, 2010.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Barbee
John Henry Barbee 1905 1964
Carey Bell (November 14, 1936 - May 6, 2007) was an American blues musician, who played the harmonica in the Chicago blues style. Bell played harmonica (harp) and bass for other blues musicians during the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s before embarking on a solo career. Besides his own albums, he recorded as an accompanist or duo artist with Earl Hooker, Robert Nighthawk, Lowell Fulson, Eddie Taylor, Louisiana Red, Jimmy Dawkins as well as a frequent partner with his son, guitarist Lurrie Bell. Blues Revue called Bell "one of Chicago’s finest harpists." The Chicago Tribune said Bell is "a terrific talent in the tradition of Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter.”
Bell was born Carey Bell Harrington in Macon, Mississippi. As a child, Bell was intrigued by the music of Louis Jordan. Bell wanted a saxophone in order to be like his hero Jordan; however, Bell's family could not afford a saxophone he had to settle for the harmonica, colloquially known as a "Mississippi saxophone." Soon Bell was attracted by the blues harmonica greats: DeFord Bailey, Big Walter Horton, Marion "Little Walter" Jacobs, and Sonny Boy Williamson I and II. Bell taught himself to play. By the time he was eight, he was quite proficient on the instrument. When he was thirteen, Bell joined his pianist godfather Lovie Lee's blues band.
Despite years in the business and work with Alligator, Bell's first full-length solo album for the label was not until Deep Down, released in 1995. In 1997, Bell released the second album on the label Good Luck Man. Second Nature (originally recorded in Finland a few years earlier) followed in 2004; a duet album with his guitarist son, Lurrie Bell (who shared the guitar duties with Carl Weathersby on Deep Down).
In 1998, Bell was awarded the Blues Music Award for Traditional Male Artist Of The Year.
Final work
In 2007, Delmark Records released a live set by Bell, accompanied by a band which included his son Lurrie, guitarist Scott Cable, Kenny Smith, Bob Stroger and Joe Thomas.
Death
Carey Bell died of heart failure on May 6, 2007, in Chicago, Illinois.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_Bell
Carey Bell 1936 2007
Edward Riley Boyd known as Eddie Boyd (November 25, 1914 – July 13, 1994) was an American blues piano player, born on Stovall's Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States.
Boyd moved to the Beale Street district of Memphis, Tennessee in 1936 where he played piano and guitar with his group, the Dixie Rhythm Boys. Boyd followed the great migration northward to the factories of Chicago, Illinois in 1941.
He wrote and recorded the hit songs "Five Long Years" (1952), "24 Hours" (1953), and the "Third Degree" (co-written by Willie Dixon, also 1953). Boyd toured Europe with Buddy Guy's band in 1965 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. He later toured and recorded with Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.
Tired of the racial discrimination he experienced in the United States, he first moved to Belgium where he recorded with the Dutch band, Cuby and the Blizzards. He settled in Helsinki, Finland in 1970, where he recorded ten blues records, the first being Praise to Helsinki (1970). He married his wife, Leila, in 1977. His last blues concert took place in 1984. After that he performed only gospel music.
Boyd died in 1994 in Helsinki, Finland, just a few months before Eric Clapton released the chart-topping blues album, From the Cradle that included Boyd's "Five Long Years" and "Third Degree".
Eddie Boyd 1914 1994
2004 Grammy Nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album
Veteran blues harpist James Cotton, a veteran of the Chicago blues tradition who ran with Muddy Waters’ pack during the ‘50s and ‘60s, bares it all in a rollicking new release, Baby, Don’t You Tear My Clothes, his latest installment on Telarc. The new album follows his 35th Anniversary Jam, the 2002 release that scored a W.C. Handy for Traditional Blues Album of the Year.
Joining the celebrated bluesman on Baby, Don’t Tear My Clothes is a collection of some of the best musicians from around the world, each helping Cotton bring to life his vision of American roots music. Bobby Rush brings his signature chitlin’ circuit groove to the title track, while Odetta and James pair up on the blues classic, “Key to the Highway.” Doc and Merle Watson join Cotton on a nostalgic country guitar/harmonica party on Leroy Carr’s seminal “How Long Blues.” Other roots music luminaries on board include C.J. Chenier, Rory Block, Dave Alvin, Jim Lauderdale, Peter Rowan, and Marcia Ball.
Cotton’s core band at the foundation of Baby, Don’t You Tear My Clothes includes some solid musicians as well, several of whom appeared on the 35th Anniversary Jam recording: guitarist Derek O’Brien, pianist David Maxwell, bassist Noel Neal and drummer Per Hanson.
Born in 1935 in Tunica, Mississippi, Cotton started playing harmonica at age six. He first learned to mimic the sounds of passing freight trains until he heard Sonny Boy Williamson on the King Biscuit Hour over station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. Though Williamson was known for his irascible personality, he took note of Cotton’s precocious talent and took the nine-year-old boy under his wing for the next five or six years.
Cotton and Williamson parted ways in1950, and Cotton formed his own band in Memphis, where he caught the attention of Sun Records founder and roots rock pioneer Sam Phillips. Cotton recorded classics like “Hold Me In Your Arms” and “Cotton Crop Blues” on the Sun label before hooking up with Muddy Waters in 1954 at age 18.Cotton played in Waters’ band for the next twelve years, then struck out on his own in 1966. For the next three decades and beyond, Cotton recorded on various labels and covered countless miles of road—bringing his mix of Delta and urban blues to the masses on a first-hand basis, staying true to his roots despite never-ending shifts in music fashion.
Baby, Don’t You Tear My Clothes is Cotton’s third solo release on Telarc. He joined the label in 2000 with the release of Fire Down Under the Hill, followed by 35th Anniversary Blues Jam two years later. In that time, he has also appeared on several blues compilations and tribute albums released on Telarc.
James Cotton - harmonica
Per Hanson -- drums
David Maxwell -- piano
Noel Neal -- bass
Derek O'Brien – guitar
Featuring Special Guests:
Dave Alvin -- vocal and guitar
Marcia Ball -- vocal and guitar
Rory Block - vocal and guitar
C.J. Chenier -- vocal and accordion
Jim Lauderdale -- vocal
Odetta -- vocal
Peter Rowan -- vocal and guitar
Bobby Rush -- vocal
Doc & Merle Watson -- vocal and guitar
“On his new CD, Baby Don’t You Tear My Clothes (on Telarc), he joins forces with distinguished singers, some of whom are also top instrumentalists. This has the benign effect of stretching Cotton’s talents into new areas.” -- Town & Village James Cotton "Slow Blues"
James Cotton 1935
Blind John Davis (December 7, 1913 — October 12, 1985) was an African American, blues, jazz and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. He is best remembered for his recordings including “A Little Every Day” and “Everybody’s Boogie”.
Source and additional info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_John_Davis
Blind John Davis 1913 1985
I hope you’ve enjoyed this section of the series on the “Complete List of Blues Musicians”. I’ll be covering Part VIb: Chicago/Detroit Blues in a few days but in the interim, I’ll more to share with all of you. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend, I hope everyone has plans for the first weekend of the summer.
Well, until next time;
Musician by Night
“Help Keep The Blues Alive”
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