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Bruce Iglauer
Bruce Iglauer (born July 10, 1947) is an American businessman and record producer who founded Alligator Records as an independent record label featuring blues music. Early life and career Iglauer was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Wyoming, Ohio. He became interested in the blues during the mid-1960s while attending Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and began hosting a college radio show, then moving on to promoting concerts at Lawrence by Howlin' Wolf and Luther Allison. He came to Chicago in 1966 as a “blues pilgrim” who wanted to check out the University of Chicago Folk Festival. He came to the attention of Bob Koester, and joined the staff of Delmark Records in Chicago as a shipping clerk in 1970. He was a co-founder of ''Living Blues'' magazine in 1970. When Iglauer's advice to sign Hound Dog Taylor & The House Rockers was declined by Delmark, he recorded the group himself, and in so doing created Alligat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor List of metropolitan statistical areas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Washtenaw County. Ann Arbor is also included in the Metro Detroit, Greater Detroit Combined statistical area, Combined Statistical Area and the Great Lakes megalopolis, the most populated and largest Megaregions of the United States, megalopolis in North America. Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan. The university significantly shapes Ann Arbor's economy as it employs about 30,000 workers, including about 12,000 in the University of Michigan Health System, medical center. The city's economy is also centered on high technology, with several companies drawn to the area by the university's research and development infrastructure. Ann A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Koko Taylor
Koko Taylor (born Cora Anna Walton, September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009) was an American singer whose style encompassed Chicago blues, electric blues, rhythm and blues and soul blues. Sometimes called "The Queen of the Blues", she was known for her rough, powerful vocals. Life and career Born on a farm near Memphis, Tennessee, Taylor was the daughter of a sharecropper. She left Tennessee for Chicago in 1952 with her husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor, a truck driver. In the late 1950s, she began singing in blues clubs in Chicago. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to more opportunities for performing and her first recordings. In 1963 she had a single on USA Records, and in 1964 a cut on a Chicago blues collection on Spivey Records, called ''Chicago Blues''. In 1964 Dixon brought Taylor to Checker Records, a subsidiary label of Chess Records, for which she recorded "Wang Dang Doodle", a song written by Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf five years earlier. The re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buckwheat Zydeco
Stanley Dural Jr. (November 14, 1947 – September 24, 2016), better known by his stage name Buckwheat Zydeco, was an American accordionist and zydeco musician. He was one of the few zydeco artists to achieve mainstream success. His music group was formally billed as Buckwheat Zydeco and Ils Sont Partis Band ("Ils Sont Partis" being French for "They have left"), but they often performed as merely Buckwheat Zydeco. ''The New York Times'' said: "Stanley 'Buckwheat' Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics…propulsive rhythms, incendiary performances."Pareles, Jon. ''The New York Times'', February 15, 2008. ''USA Today'' called him "a zydeco trailblazer."Gundersen, Edna"Can't hit Jazz Fest? Let the music come to you" ''USA Today'', April 22, 2009. Buckwheat Zydeco performed with famous musicians such as Eric Clapton (with whom he also recorded), U2 and the Boston Pops. The band ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcia Ball
Marcia Ball (born March 20, 1949, Orange, Texas, United States) is an American blues singer and pianist raised in Vinton, Louisiana. Ball was described in ''USA Today'' as "a sensation, saucy singer and superb pianist... where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet."Gundersen, EdnaUSA Today February 5, 2006. The ''Boston Globe'' described her music as "an irresistible celebratory blend of rollicking, two-fisted New Orleans piano, Louisiana swamp rock and smoldering Texas blues from a contemporary storyteller." Career Ball was born into a musical family. Her grandmother and aunt both played piano music of their time and Ball started piano lessons when she started school, and showed an early interest in New Orleans style piano playing, as exemplified by Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, and James Booker. She has named Irma Thomas, the New Orleans vocalist, as her chief vocal inspiration. Ball studied English at Louisiana State University in the 1960s while playing in a ban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roomful Of Blues
Roomful of Blues is an American blues and swing revival big band based in Rhode Island. With a recording career that spans over 50 years, they have toured worldwide and recorded many albums. Roomful of Blues, according to the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', "Swagger, sway and swing with energy and precision".Wisser, Jeff. ''Chicago Sun-Times'', March 23, 2003 Since 1967, the group’s blend of swing, rock and roll, jump blues, boogie-woogie and soul has earned it five Grammy Award nominations and many other accolades, including seven Blues Music Awards (with a victory as Blues Band Of The Year in 2005). '' Billboard'' called the band "a tour de force of horn-fried blues…Roomful is so tight and so right."Van Vleck, Phillip. ''Billboard'' January 22, 2005 The ''Down Beat'' International Critics Poll has twice selected Roomful of Blues as Best Blues Band. Roomful of Blues is currently an eight-piece unit led by guitarist Chris Vachon and featuring long-time tenor and alto sax player R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shemekia Copeland
Charon Shemekia Copeland (born April 10, 1979) is an American electric blues vocalist. To date, she has released ten albums and been presented with seven Blues Music Awards. Career Copeland was born in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is the daughter of Texas blues guitarist and singer Johnny Copeland. She began singing at an early age and her first public performance was at the Cotton Club when she was about 10. She began to pursue a singing career in earnest at age 16. When her father's health began to decline, he took Shemekia on tour as his opening act, which helped establish her name on the blues circuit. Copeland graduated in 1997 from Teaneck High School in Teaneck, New Jersey. She landed a recording contract with Alligator Records, which issued her debut album, ''Turn the Heat Up!'' in 1998, following it up with a tour of the blues festival circuit in America and Europe. Her second album, ''Wicked'', was released in 2000 and featured a duet with one of her heroes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Musselwhite
Charles Douglas Musselwhite (born January 31, 1944) is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the white bluesmen who came to prominence, along with Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop, as a pivotal figure in helping to revive the Chicago Blues movement of the 1960s. He has often been identified as a "white bluesman". Musselwhite was reportedly the inspiration for Elwood Blues; the character played by Dan Aykroyd in the 1980 film, ''The Blues Brothers''. Biography Musselwhite was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi to white parents. Originally claiming to be of partly Choctaw descent, in a 2005 interview he said his mother had told him he was of distant Cherokee descent. His family considered it natural to play music. His father played guitar and harmonica, his mother played piano, and a relative was a one-man band. At the age of three, Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee. When he was a teenager, Memphis experienced the period when roc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Cotton
James Henry Cotton (July 1, 1935 – March 16, 2017) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many fellow blues artists and with his own band. He also played drums early in his career. Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Muddy's bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965, he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band The Electric Flag, Electr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (April 18, 1924 – September 10, 2005) was an American singer and multi-instrumentalist from Louisiana. He won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album in 1983 for his album, ''Alright Again!''. Early life Brown was born in Vinton, Louisiana, and raised near Orange, Texas. His father was a railroad worker and local musician who taught him several musical instruments, including fiddle by age 5; as well as piano and guitar. He had at least one brother. Career Brown was performing guitar by age ten. He also played drums in swing bands as a teenager. 1940s and 1950s Brown served in the military during World War II. His professional music career began in 1945, playing drums in San Antonio, Texas. He was given the nickname "Gatemouth" by a high school teacher who said he had a "voice like a gate". His career was boosted when he attended a concert by T-Bone Walker in Don Robey's Bronze Peacock Houston nightclub in 1947; Walker became ill, and Bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Buchanan
Leroy "Roy" Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and two later solo albums that made it to the ''Billboard'' chart. He never achieved stardom, but is considered a highly influential guitar player. ''Guitar Player'' praised him as having one of the "50 Greatest Tones of All Time." He appeared on the PBS music program ''Austin City Limits'' in 1977 (season 2). Biography Birth and early career: 1939-1960 Leroy Buchanan was born in Ozark, Arkansas, and was raised there and in Pixley, California, a farming area between Visalia and Bakersfield. His father was a sharecropper in Arkansas and a farm laborer in California. Buchanan told interviewers that his father was also a Pentecostal preacher, a note repeated in ''Guitar Player'' magazine but disputed by his older brother J.D. Buchanan told how his first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Winter
John Dawson Winter III (February 23, 1944 – July 16, 2014) was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's list of the " 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Early life Johnny Winter was born in Beaumont, Texas, on February 23, 1944. He and younger brother Edgar (born 1946) were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Both were born with albinism. Their father, Leland, Mississippi native John Dawson Winter Jr. (1909–2001), was also a musician who played saxophone and guitar and sang at churches, weddings, Kiwanis and Rotary Club gatherings. Johnny and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clifton Chenier
Clifton Chenier (June 25, 1925 – December 12, 1987), was an American Creole musician known as a pioneer of zydeco, a style of music which arose from Creole music, with rhythm and blues, R&B, blues, and Cajun music, Cajun influences. He sang and played the accordion and won a Grammy Award in 1983. He was known as the King of Zydeco, and also billed as the King of the South. Biography Chenier was a native of Leonville, Louisiana, near Opelousas, Louisiana, Opelousas. He spoke Louisiana French as a first language. Chenier began his recording career in 1954, when he signed with Elko Records and released ''Cliston's Blues'' [sic], a regional success. In 1955 he signed with Specialty Records and garnered his first national hit with his label debut "Ay-Tete Fi" (Hey, Little Girl) (a cover version, cover of Professor Longhair's song). The national success of the release led to numerous tours with popular rhythm and blues performers such as Ray Charles, Etta James, and Lowell Fulso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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