Richard A. Allen (January 6, 1935 – May 29, 2005)''

Juke Blues ''Juke Blues'' is a British magazine covering blues, R&B, gospel, soul, zydeco and jazz. It was established in 1985 in London by Cilla Huggins, John Broven and Bez Turner, and is now published in Bath, Somerset, England. Cilla Huggins has been so ...

'' no.59, 2005, Obituaries, p.68 was an American blues singer from Chicago. He was born in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

, and began his singing career as a member of a church choir in his home town. He relocated to Chicago in 1960, and received a recording contract one year later at Age Records. He had a local

hit Hit means to strike someone or something. Hit or HIT may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Fictional entities * Hit, a fictional character from '' Dragon Ball Super'' * Homicide International Trust, or HIT, a fictional organization ...

with "You Better Be Sure" and, in 1963, his hit "Cut You A-Loose" reached Number 20 in '' Billboards R&B chart. Some of his recordings of the 1960s, such as "It's A Mess I Tell You" and "I Can't Stand No Signifying", portended the emerging

soul-blues Soul blues is a style of blues music developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that combines elements of soul music and urban contemporary music. Origin African American singers and musicians who grew up listening to the electric blues by a ...

style of the 1970s. After his retirement from the music industry in the early 1970s, he ran a laundry and a limousine service. In 2001, he performed at the

Mönsterås Mönsterås () is a locality and the seat of Mönsterås Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Ki ...

Festival in Sweden, and the following year at the Chicago Blues Festival. He died in 2005, aged 70.

References

* Komara, Edward (ed.) (2006), ''Encyclopedia of the Blues'', Routledge

External links

Obituary
''Jazz News'', 2005 American blues singers Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee Chicago blues musicians 1935 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American singers USA Records artists {{US-singer-stub