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Kingston Mines (blues Club)
Kingston Mines is a blues nightclub in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois. The club derived its name from the Kingston Mines Theatre Company founded by June Pyskacek in 1969 at 2356 N. Lincoln Avenue and named after Kingston Mines, Illinois, where the father of one of its actors, Jack Wallace, worked. Pyskacek allowed Harry Hoch and a partner open a café and performance space in the front of the building. Called the Kingston Mines Company Store, it was acquired circa 1972 by Lenin "Doc" Pellegrino, M.D., and renamed the Kingston Mines Café. Although the original production of '' Grease'' was written and first premiered at the Kingston Mines Theatre in 1971 before moving to Broadway a year later, the theatre company expired in 1973, while the Café survived as a blues club. It moved to its current location at 2548 N. Halsted in 1982. Kingston Mines showcases a variety of blues by two separate bands, every night, on two stages, 365 days a year; from delta blues to Chicago blues. Thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...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] |
Blues Foundation
The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, that is affiliated with more than 175 blues organizations from various parts of the world. Founded in 1980, a 25-person board of directors governs the foundation whose stated mission is to preserve blues heritage, celebrate blues recording and performance, and expand worldwide awareness of the blues. On its formation, the foundation organized the annual W. C. Handy Awards to "give recognition of the finest in blues performances and recordings." The awards have since been renamed the Blues Music Awards. The BMAs are generally recognized as the highest honor given to blues musicians, and are awarded by vote of Blues Foundation members. The Blues Foundation is also responsible for the Blues Hall of Fame Museum, International Blues Challenge (IBC), Keeping the Blues Alive Award (KBA) and Blues in the Schools program. Every year, the Blues Foundation presents the KBA Awards to individuals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joanna Connor
Joanna Connor (born August 31, 1962)] is an American Chicago-based blues singing, singer, songwriter and virtuosa guitarist.] Early life Connor was born in Brooklyn of New York City, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. After moving to Chicago in 1984, she was drawn to the Chicago blues scene, eventually sharing the stage with James Cotton, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and A.C. Reed. Music career By 1987, Connor had started her own band, and recorded her first album for Blind Pig Records in 1989.] In 2002, Connor left Blind Pig Records, and signed a recording contract with M.C. Records (a small independent record label).] In 2021, Connor released the No. 1 blues album ''4801 South Indiana Avenue'', via Joe Bonamassa's Joe Bonamassa#Keeping the Blues Alive Records, Keeping the Blues Alive Records. While on tour in 2022, Connor performed live at Kingston Mines (blues club), Kingston Mines, a blues club. Discography Albums * ''Believe It!'' (Blind Pig Records) (1989) * '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Wheeler (musician)
Michael Lewis Wheeler (born June 30, 1961) is a Chicago blues songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist. His first gig was with Muddy Waters' piano player, Lovie Lee. He performed with numerous Chicago bands and well-known artists such as Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, and Shemekia Copeland. He formed his own band, the Mike Wheeler Band, in 2001.His CD, ''Self Made Man'', was released by Delmark Records in 2012 with critical acclaim. He was inducted into the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame in 2014. He is a regular performer at the famed Chicago blues club, Kingston Mines. Life and career Wheeler (Michael Lewis Wheeler) was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 30, 1961. His music career spans more than 30 years. He played his first gig in 1984 with Muddy Waters' piano player, Lovie Lee, at Lilly's, a Lincoln Park bar in Chicago. His mother was his first musical influence by playing blues (such as Muddy Waters and B.B. King), R&B, and soul records in their home. He recorded and played on n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Shaw
Eddie Shaw (March 20, 1937 – January 29, 2018) was an American Chicago blues tenor saxophonist, arranger and bandleader. He led Howlin' Wolf's band, the Wolf Gang, from 1972, both before Wolf's death in 1976 and subsequently. Biography Shaw was born in Stringtown, Mississippi. In his teenage years, Shaw played tenor saxophone with local blues musicians, such as Little Milton and Willie Love. At the age of 14, he played in a jam session in Greenville, Mississippi, with Ike Turner's band. At a gig in Itta Bena, Mississippi, when the then 20-year-old Shaw performed, Muddy Waters invited him to join his Chicago-based band. In Waters's band, Shaw divided the tenor saxophone position with A.C. Reed. In 1972 he joined Howlin' Wolf, leading his band, the Wolf Gang, and writing half the songs on ''The Back Door Wolf'' (1973). After the singer's death in 1976 he took over the band and its residency at the 1815 Club, renamed Eddie's Place. Shaw led the band on ''Living Chicago ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linsey Alexander
Linsey Alexander (born July 23, 1942) is an American blues songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist. He has been a fixture in clubs on Chicago's North Side for nearly two decades and has played with numerous blues musicians, including Buddy Guy, A.C. Reed, Magic Slim, and B.B. King. Life and career Alexander was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in an area along the Mississippi Blues Trail. His family was "poor but honest and hardworking" sharecroppers. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his mother and a sister when he was 12 years old. Alexander's interest in music started when a family friend he knew only as Otis taught him enough that when Otis left his guitar as a gift at Alexander's home, he was able pick it up and play. Alexander concentrated on singing as a teenager and later developed his guitar playing. His early influences were blues, country music, and rock and roll, including the blues keyboardist Rosco Gordon and the rock-and-roll artists Chuck Berry and Elvis Presl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magic Slim
Morris Holt (August 7, 1937 – February 21, 2013), known as Magic Slim, was an American blues singer and guitarist. Born at Torrance, near Grenada, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers, he followed blues greats such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf to Chicago, developing his own place in the Chicago blues scene. In 2017, Magic Slim was posthumously inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame. Biography Magic Slim was forced to give up playing the piano when he lost his little finger in a cotton gin mishap. He moved first to nearby Grenada. He first came to Chicago in 1955 with his friend and mentor Magic Sam. The elder (by six months) Magic (Sam) let the younger Magic (Slim) play bass with his band and gave him his nickname. At first Slim was not rated very highly by his peers. He returned to Mississippi to work and got his younger brother Nick interested in playing bass. By 1965 he was back in Chicago and in 1970 Nick joined him in his band, the Teardrops. They played in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Weathersby
Carl Weathersby (born Carlton Weathersby; 24 February 1953, in Jackson, Mississippi) is an American electric blues vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. He has worked with Albert King and Billy Branch, among others. He is now a solo artist. He was nominated for the W. C. Handy Award for Best New Blues Artist in 1997. Biography Weathersby spent his early years in Meadville, Mississippi, a place he still considers home, although when he was aged eight, his family moved to East Chicago, Indiana. Pre-musician years (1953–1979) As a teenager, Weathersby began to learn to play the guitar. One day, after practicing " Cross Cut Saw" many times through, he decided to show his father. After he finished playing it, his father's friend, a man Weathersby knew as Albert, the diesel mechanic, said, "Man, that ain't the way that song goes, that ain't the way I played it." The mechanic turned out to be Albert King, who then showed Weathersby how to play it. Despite Weathersby's mistake, Ki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti-New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the ''New York Daily News'' and the ''Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park is a designated community area on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Lying to the west of Lincoln Park, Chicago's largest park, it is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Chicago. History In 1824, the United States Army built a small post near today's Clybourn Avenue and Armitage Avenue (formerly Centre Street). Native American settlements existed along Green Bay Trail, now called Clark Street (named after George Rogers Clark), at the current intersection of Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue. Before Green Bay Trail became Clark Street, it stretched as far as Green Bay, Wisconsin, including Sheridan Road, and was part of what still is Green Bay Road in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. In 1836, land from North to Fullerton and from the lake to Halsted was relatively inexpensive, costing $150 per acre ($370 ha) (1836 prices, not adjusted for inflation). Because the area was considered remote, a smallpox hospital and the city cemetery were located in Linc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago Blues
Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth century. Key features that distinguish Chicago blues from the earlier traditions, such as the Delta blues, is the prominent use of electrified instruments, especially the electric guitar, and especially the use of electronic effects such as distortion and overdrive. Muddy Waters, a colleague of Delta blues musicians Son House and Robert Johnson, migrated to Chicago in 1943, joining the established Big Bill Broonzy, where they developed a distinctive style of blues music. Joined by artists such as Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, and John Lee Hooker, Chicago Blues reached an international audience by the late 1950s and early 1960s, directly influencing not only the development of early rock and roll musicians such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
