Paul Joseph deLay (January 31, 1952 – March 7, 2007) was an American

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 Afr ...

vocalist and

harmonicist The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica incl ...

Life and career

Paul deLay was born in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, United States. His musical career started in the early 1970s with a band called "Brown Sugar", which played numerous

West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...

gigs. In 1976, he and guitarist Jim Mesi formed the Paul deLay Blues Band, which performed well into the 1980s. The band also recorded several albums during that time. By the late 1980s, deLay was suffering from alcohol and cocaine addiction. In 1990, he was arrested for drug trafficking, and served a 41-month prison sentence. He performed in Prison in Walla Walla with Michael Morey of Seattle's Alleged Perpetrators on bass. While he was incarcerated, his band continued without him, performing as the "No deLay Band" and featuring longtime Portland blueswoman Linda Hornbuckle as lead vocalist in lieu of deLay. Upon his release from prison, deLay (now clean and sober) rejoined the band and recorded a series of critically acclaimed albums. In 2002, deLay assembled the final version of his band, with David Vest sharing lead vocals and playing piano, Peter Dammann on guitar, and Jeff Minnick and Dave Kahl on drums and bass. A live CD featuring this lineup was released in 2007, entering the Top Ten on ''Billboard'''s national blues

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

. Paul deLay continued touring and recording until his final illness. In March 2007, after returning to Portland from a gig in

Klamath Falls, Oregon Klamath Falls ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Klamath County, Oregon, United States. The city was originally called ''Linkville'' when George Nurse founded the town in 1867. It was named after the Link River, on whose falls the city was ...

, deLay felt ill and sought medical treatment. It was discovered that he was suffering from end-stage

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ' ...

; he soon lapsed into a coma from which he would not recover. He died in Portland on March 7, 2007, aged 55. An outgrowth of the memorial concerts is an annual event, a benefit for a scholarship at Ethos, a non-profit, Portland-based music education program, in deLay's name.

Awards and achievements

Over his career, deLay received a W.C. Handy Award for best instrumentalist, a recording of the year award from the Portland Music Association, and several awards from the Cascade Blues Association.Krough, D. (March 7, 2007)
Portland bluesman Paul deLay dies
.

KGW KGW (channel 8) is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Jefferson Street in southwestern Portland, and its transmitter is located in the city' ...

-TV. Retrieved March 9, 2007.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:DeLay, Paul 1952 births 2007 deaths American blues singers American blues harmonica players Deaths from leukemia Harmonica blues musicians Musicians from Portland, Oregon Deaths from cancer in Oregon 20th-century American musicians Singers from Oregon 20th-century American singers