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Tina Turner 5/2023

Tina Turner, proud queen of rockTina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., northeast of Memphis, and spent her earliest years on the Poindexter farm in Nutbush, an unincorporated area nearby, where she sang in the choir of the Spring Hill Baptist Church, along with her parents and two sisters. Her father, Floyd, known by his middle name, Richard, worked as the farm’s overseer — “We were well-to-do farmers,”  — and had a difficult relationship with his wife, Zelma (Currie) Bullock.

Her parents left Anna and her older sister, Alline, with relatives when they went to work at a military installation in Knoxville, TN during World War II. The family reunited after the war, but Zelma left her husband in the early 1950s and Anna went to live with her maternal grandmother in Brownsville.
After her grandmother died, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, rejoining her mother as she attended Sumner High School there. She and sister Alline began frequenting the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis to hear Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm.

At one time she requested to sing with a band led by a handsome, dapper guitarist who would soon become the profoundly dominant influence in her life. At first Ike Turner refused to entertain her pleas to be allowed to sing with his Kings Of Rhythm – until she grabbed a microphone during a band break, and belted out B B King’s ‘You Know I Love You’. Ike asked her if that was the extent of her repertoire. On finding out that it wasn’t, he let her sing a few more. By the end of the night she was the band’s newest ‘chick singer’. Continue reading Tina Turner 5/2023

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Don Everly 8/2021

Don Everly (The Everly Brothers) was born in Brownie, Kentucky on February 1, 1937. He was of German, English and Cherokee descent. His formidable father, “Ike” Everly was a coal miner in Brownie, Ky., and Don was born in Brownie’s coal camp. Ike also was a guitar player, taught by Arnold Schultz, the Black musician who taught Bill Monroe. And when the coal was gone, Ike moved the family to Chicago in the late 1930s in search of a career in music. A second son, Phil, was born there, and the family moved to Shenandoah, Iowa, where Ike had a radio show in the mid-1940s. “Little Donnie” sang the theme, “Free as a Little Bird as I Can Be,” and then Phil was brought in, and with that the Everly Family was on the air. Don and Phil attended Longfellow elementary school in Waterloo. They sang on their father’s radio show and the family entertained and sang around the area.

In 1953, the Everlys moved to Knoxville and both boys attended West High School where Don graduated. While in Knoxville the two high school brothers performed on the Cas Walker Show on TV until they added some early rock and roll to their country music set list. At that point, Cas Walker fired them adding that “Rock and Roll don’t sell groceries.”

The teenage brothers were viewed as long-haired, leather-jacket-wearing toughs. Ike got a meeting for the boys with country music mogul Chet Atkins in Nashville, and Atkins was so impressed with Don’s songwriting that he placed one of his songs with Kitty Wells.

“Don said he was considering college but when Kitty Wells bought his song “Thou Shalt Not Steal” (which Don wrote at WHS) and recorded it, the check came in the mail and he was now a songwriter.” He confirmed the old Knoxville urban legend: seeing the check and knowing that Nashville would be the next step. “That check bought us four tires and we were heading to Nashville,” Everly  recalled.

In 1955, the family moved to Nashville and the boys auditioned for labels as a brother act. A single they made went nowhere. After one difficult session for Columbia, yielding the rare 1956 single Keep A’Lovin’ Me/The Sun Keeps Shining, they signed with the New York label Cadence, later switching to the newly formed Warner Bros Records. From 1957 to 1965 they had 28 hits in the British Top 30, and comparable success in the US.

When they signed with Cadence and were given a tune (Bye Bye Love) to kick around, written by two of the hottest songwriters in town, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. “Bye Bye Love” topped the country chart and hit No. 2 on the pop chart right behind Elvis Presley’s “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” and No. 5 on the rhythm and blues chart in 1957. It became the Everly Brothers’ first million-seller. They opened for Buddy Holly on the road for almost 2 years before another Bryant number, “Wake Up Little Susie,” topped the pop charts in 1957. When Chuck Berry was asked what song he most wished he’d written, he declared it was “Susie.” “All I Have to Do Is Dream” followed in 1958.

Rock ‘n’ roll was in ascendance, but if the music was mostly about revolt and rule-breaking, here was a style that felt both pre-rock and yet of the moment, built on family harmony and gentle sadness that seemed innocent even then. The music floated on the brothers’ harmonies, in effortless chromosomal alignment and held in place by the crisp playing of Nashville studio veterans.

The boys were seasoned professionals by the time they poured out their magic vocals on to a run of hits that married hillbilly harmonies and Nashville nous, their full-chorded acoustic guitars embracing Bo Diddley’s exotic rhythms to create the rock’n’roll end of country music’s rich, commercial sounds.

In a five-year span from 1957 to 1962, they had 15 top 10 hits, among them: “Bye Bye Love,” which launched them; “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” written by Boudleaux Bryant; and “Cathy’s Clown,” which was a No. 1 hit in 1960 and a No. 1 country hit for Reba McEntire in 1989. The hits continued: “Devoted to You” and “Bird Dog” in 1958; “(Til’) I Kissed You,” written by Don, in 1959; and “Let It Be Me,” and “When Will I Be Loved” in 1960. “Crying in the Rain” and then “That’s Old Fashioned (That’s the Way Love Should Be)” from 1962 were their final forays into the top 10.

The Everly Brothers were certainly pioneers in rock and folk music and inspired artists like the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, They influenced everyone from The Beach Boys to The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, Bee Gees, Buddy Holly and many others. In fact, the Everlys toured with Buddy Holly for two years before his untimely death. Fifteen years later their Appalachian roots inspired country rockers such as Gram Parsons and Linda Ronstadt, who had a hit covering their “When Will I Be Loved” in 1975.

Personal problems (including Don’s addiction to amphetamines) began wearing away on the pair, and in 1973 the Everlys broke up during a concert at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. Mutual dislike and differing temperaments caused Don and Phil Everly to retire and they both went solo. During that time Phil sang backing vocals in Warren Zevon’s debut album. He also recorded for Clint Eastwood’s ‘Every Which Way But Loose’ and ‘Any Which Way You Can’. Don recorded ‘Blue Kentucky Girl’ with Emmylou Harris.

Don found some success on the US country charts in the mid- to late-1970s, in Nashville with his band, Dead Cowboys, and playing with Albert Lee.

Don also performed solo at an annual country music festival in London in mid-1976. His appearance was well received, and he was given “thunderous applause”, even though critics noted that the performance was uneven. Don recorded “Everytime You Leave” with Emmylou Harris on her 1979 album Blue Kentucky Girl.

The Everly Brothers reunited in 1983 for a show at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The following year they released the album ‘EB84’, produced by Dave Edmunds. Paul McCartney wrote the first single ‘On The Wings of a Nightingale’.

Simon & Garfunkel took the Everly Brothers on tour in the 1980s but instead of the brothers opening for them, they appeared in the middle of the Simon & Garfunkel set.  The Everly Brothers also sang backing vocals for Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’.

Don and his younger brother, Phil, were in the first group to be inaugurated in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, alongside Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis. Their family harmonies set them apart from the rest, as did an out-of-time gentleness: the Everly Brothers’ well-crafted songs floated between country and city and moved with the rhythms of a dream.

In the time line of rock & roll they were the heroes of our heroes.

But that became also the reason why their hey days were cut short, way too short actually.

They had the gravitas to cover other artists’ crucial songs, from Little Richard’s Lucille, given a keening, slow-motion vocal fall, to the blues classics Trouble in Mind and Step It Up and Go, and Mickey & Sylvia’s Love Is Strange. Don, taken through the Maxwell Street market in Chicago as a young boy by his father, was ever after aware of gospel and blues. In an era of pretty pop, the Everlys sought a tougher sound on records such as The Price of Love (1965) and their extraordinary revival of the standard Temptation (1961), which pre-figured Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”. But, like Spector’s River Deep, Mountain High, the Everlys’ Temptation was (by their standards) a flop in the US, and The Price of Love a bigger one.

Then there were the Beatles, whose “new” harmonies made the Everlys old-fashioned overnight. Made redundant before they were 30, Don and Phil felt, wrongly, that the Beatles had stolen from them without acknowledgment – John and Paul ‘admitted’ that they had taken inspiration for the harmonies on Please Please Me from Cathy’s Clown.

Sidelined further by prog rock, Don and Phil tried first to sound like Simon and Garfunkel, and then their influential 1968 album Roots which, with the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, marked a step towards the emergence of “country rock”.

Don continued to write songs: Human Race (1970), the cri de coeur I’m Tired of Singing My Song in Las Vegas on the album Stories We Could Tell (1972), and most of the magnificent ignored solo album Don Everly (1971), a compelling collection that sings of human frailty with profound compassion (yet which, Phil told a biographer, he had felt as a betrayal, “like cheating on a marriage”).

These were perilous decades, especially for Don, the more temperamental and creative of the pair, whose drug adventures probably loosened an already shaky grip on reality. After a childhood paraded as a cute novelty item, dressed as if he were a twin, in cowboy clothes, his only sample of “normal life” was a spell in the Marines (of which he was proud) in the middle of being half of a pair of teen idols: one of the world’s most influential, well-loved and successful acts – and then, suddenly, one of the most passé.

The Everly Brothers split up in public acrimony, their last performance together on 14 July 1973, in Buena Park, California, at which Phil hurled down his guitar and stormed off stage, leaving Don to finish the concert alone.

On two other occasions Phil managed without Don. In 1962, on tour in Britain, a drug-fueled Don tried to throw himself from a hotel window and Phil had to perform solo on the remaining dates. And then, recording a solo album in 1983, right at the end of the brothers’ bleak 10 years of separation, Phil brought in Cliff Richard, and on one track they duetted as if Don could somehow be replaced. Phil and Cliff’s She Means Nothing to Me was a Top 10 UK hit, just to compound the enormity of the “betrayal”. Don saw it as nothing less, though it was he who had actually dissolved the brothers’ lifelong professional partnership.

It was a further trauma for both to discover that separately, no one cared that much about either of them. But in 1983 they staged a moving reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

They still sang exquisitely, and a small segment of their shows offered songs learned from their father, whom they worshipped, and the Kentucky guitarist Mose Rager: authentic old-time country material. Don played loving, intense guitar, though sparingly in latterday performances. Singing lead, he lived in the spontaneity of the moment, his phrasing inspired, warm and free. He was an artist. But they hardly dared stray from their teenage hits. Besides, to have done so would have meant having to rehearse together, and that was not in the stars in those days.

Off-stage, Don was a glutton for life and a connoisseur. He had always seen the latest film; he read widely; he was interested in modern art and, on a modest scale, collected it. An avid explorer of restaurants, he loved to talk of food and to cook it. On tour, the Anglophile rock star would rise early and roam the towns he found himself in. These explorations made his professional duties tolerable, as he would deftly concede. At showtime in 90s Croydon, he realised he had forgotten to change into his stage clothes. Told he looked fine, he answered: “No, I better change. That suit knows the words.”

In later years the story of the Everly Brothers stranded in time. And when we, the audience, were paying attention again to their revival, they couldn’t get along. And if you were born in the forties and experienced their hits firsthand, this was probably gut-wrenching, much as the Beatles break up in 1969. But to the younger later generation, the Everlys were more cartoons than legends.

But then they had a late victory lap. They opened for Simon & Garfunkel on their 2003 reunion tour. It was a last hurrah for both Simon & Garfunkel and the Everlys. Garfunkel lost his voice and by time it came back Simon no longer wanted to go on the road. As for the Everlys? They still couldn’t get their relationship right.

Don Everly attended the Annual Music Masters as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame paid homage to the Everly Brothers on October 25, 2014, several months after Phil’s demise. Don took the State Theater stage and performed the Everlys’ classic hit “Bye Bye Love”.

Don stopped performing in 2018. His final performance was a guest appearance with Paul Simon on Simon’s 2018 farewell tour in Nashville. Don and Simon performed “Bye Bye Love”, with Simon on Phil Everly’s original tenor harmony.

In many ways the Everly Brothers were there first. They established the paradigm. I was maybe too young to be there, to be infected, but the people I was listening to ate up all those records. Even in Europe Phil & Don were gods, no matter what they did thereafter, those tracks were just that big and special. The Everlys are truly one of the building blocks of rock and roll. Which meant so much, that the Rock and Roll homage created a Rock and Roll hall of fame and built a museum to contain it, and the Everlys were installed in the first induction ceremony in 1986.

And now Don Everly has also been released from his earthly contract on August 21, 2021, aged 84. His brother Phil had died in 2014. The Everly family matriarch, mother Margaret Embry Everly, died four months later in December, aged 102. 

About their influence on superstars that followed, Paul McCarthy of the Beatles said it best: “They were one of the major influences on the Beatles. When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don.”

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Charlie Daniels 7/2020

Charlie Daniels (83) was born on October 28, 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina to teenage parents William and LaRue Daniel. The “s” in Daniels’ name was added by mistake when his birth certificate was filled out. Two weeks after Daniels had begun to attend elementary school, his family moved to Valdosta, Georgia, commuting between Valdosta and Elizabethtown, North Carolina, before moving back to Wilmington. After enduring measles, Daniels would require glasses to see for most of his life afterward, which led to him being bullied by other children at his school. Despite these challenges, Daniels found inspiration in Pentecostal gospel music, local bluegrass groups, and rhythm and blues artists he heard on the radio.

He graduated from high school in 1955 and began his music career as a member of the bluegrass band Misty Mountain Boys in the 1950s. Soon after he enlisted in the rock ‘n’ roll revolution ignited by Mississippian Elvis Aron Presley. Already skilled on guitar, fiddle and mandolin, Daniels formed a rock ‘n roll band the Rockets and hit the road.

While enroute to California in 1959 the group paused in Texas to record “Jaguar,” an instrumental produced by the legendary Bob Johnston, which was picked up for national distribution by Epic. And the Rockets became The Jaguars. It was also the beginning of a long association with Johnston. After discovering jazz as a genre, the Jaguars began performing jazz music, before reverting to rock and country music by 1964.

During his career as a rock and roll sideman, Daniels also wrote songs for other performers. In July 1963, soul singer Jerry Jackson recorded Daniels’ song “It Hurts Me”; the following year 1964 and Elvis Presley recorded the better-known version of this song, which was released on the flip side of “Kissin’ Cousins.” The songwriting credits list Charles E. Daniels and Joy Byers as the songwriters, although Byers’ husband, songwriter and producer Bob Johnston, was the actual co-writer with Daniels. In 1967 Johnston encouraged Daniels to move to Nashville to get work as a session player, which led to Daniels recording with Bob Dylan on his 1969 album Nashville Skyline, Ringo Starr on his 1970 album Beaucoups of Blues and Leonard Cohen on his 1971 album Songs of Love and Hate, as well as further sessions with Dylan and Cohen’s 1971 European tour. Dylan and Daniels found each other creatively invigorating during their recordings together, with Dylan saying that “when Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions”, and Daniels describing the recording sessions with Dylan as “loose, free and, most of all, fun”. Daniels also produced albums for the Youngbloods, including their 1969 album Elephant Mountain.

His own unique voice as an artist emerged as Charlie recorded his self-titled solo album in 1970 for Capitol Records, which helped lay the foundations for what became known as Southern rock.  Two years later he formed the Charlie Daniels Band and Daniels broke through as a record maker, himself with 1973’s Honey in the Rock and its hit hippie song “Uneasy Rider,” which scored top Ten Billboard His rebel anthems “Long Haired Country Boy” and “The South’s Gonna Do It” propelled his 1975 collection Fire on the Mountain to double platinum status.
The same year he followed up with the even more successful Nightrider, whose success was spurred by the Top 40 hit single “Texas”. Saddle Tramp was also a gold seller, and was the first release by the band to reach the top 10 of the Billboard Country charts.

“We were country but not what was accepted by the country music establishment at the time – certainly not what Nashville was putting out at the time. It was very much different from that. Every other music was changing and moving and cooking, and it was time for country to do that, too. And a song like “Long Haired Country Boy,” or “The South’s Going to Do It,” or “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” kind of kicked it in the rear end a little bit.”

In 1974 he invited some friends to join him at Nashville’s War Memorial Auditorium for an all-star concert he dubbed The Volunteer Jam.  The event continued for years and was broadcast in the U.S. and internationally.  Over the years, the Jam featured a diverse line up that included Willie Nelson, Ted Nugent, Roy Acuff, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Crystal Gayle, James Brown, Emmylou Harris, Amy Grant, George Thorogood, Kris Kristofferson, Little Richard, Tammy Wynette, Alabama, Oak Ridge Boys, BB King and the Allman Brothers.
 
Since then the CDB has populated radio with such memorable hits as “Long Haired Country Boy,” “The South’s Gonna Do It Again,” “In America,” “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” and of course, his signature song, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.
The band also attracted a high-profile fan in President Jimmy Carter, who used Daniels’ song “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” as his campaign theme, After Carter’s win, the band performed at his 1977 inauguration.

Epic Records signed him to its rock roster in New York in 1976. The contract, reportedly worth $3 million, was the largest ever given to a Nashville act up to that time. In the summer of 1979 Daniels rewarded the company’s faith by delivering “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” which became a platinum single, topped both country and pop charts, won a Grammy Award, earned three Country Music Association trophies, became a cornerstone of the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack and propelled Daniel’s Million Mile Reflections album to triple platinum sales levels.

The album’s title was a reference to a milestone in the Charlie Daniels Band’s legendary coast to coast tours. Including two drummers, twin guitars and a flamenco dancer. The CDB often toured more than 250 days a year and by this time had logged more than a million miles on the road. On the Million Mile Reflections Tour, transported in a convoy of busses and gleaming black tractor trailer rigs a show that stopped traffic all over the country the band now included a full horn section, back up singers, a troupe of clog dancers and sometimes a gospel choir. By 1981, the Charlie Daniels Band had twice been voted the Academy of Country Music’s touring band of the year.

Full Moon, issued in 1980, became Daniels’ third platinum album. Simple Man (1989) is also platinum while A Decade of Hits (1983) is triple platinum, and Windows (1982), Saddle Trump (1976), and Midnight Wind (1977) are Gold. He earned a Dove Award from the Gospel Music Association in 1994 for The Door, and a 1997 CMA nomination for his remake of “Long Haired Country Boy” featuring John Berry and Hal Ketchum. Amazing Grace: A Country Salute to Gospel, a compilation album including Daniels’ “Kneel at the Cross,” garnered a 1995 Grammy Award. In 1996 he was honored with a boxed set of his classics. His By the Light of the Moon: Campfire Songs & Cowboy Tunes (1997), Christmas Time Down South (1990) and Blues Hat (1997) albums added further layers to his multi-faceted style.

In 1980, Daniels had played himself in the film Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta, and as a result became closely identified with the revival of country music generated by the film’s success. Subsequently, the combination of the success of the more country-oriented song and the decline in popularity of Southern rock led Daniels to shift focus in his sound from rock to country music. After the platinum certified Full Moon (1980) and the gold certified Windows (1982), Daniels would not have another hit album until the 1989 release Simple Man, which earned Daniels another gold album, although the title track sparked controversy, as it was interpreted by some as advocating vigilantism, due to lyrics such as “Just take them rascals [rapists, killers, child abusers] out in the swamp/Put ’em on their knees and tie ’em to a stump/Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest”, which garnered Daniels considerable media attention and talk show visits.

Daniels’ annual Volunteer Jam concerts, world famous musical extravaganzas that served as a prototype for many of today’s annual day long music marathons, always featured a variety of current stars and heritage artists and are considered by historians as his most impressive contribution to Southern music. Among the artists “Jam Daddy” has hosted at 16 of these mega musical samplers are Roy Acuff, Don Henley, Tanya Tucker, Amy Grant, Leon Russell, Billy Ray Cyrus, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, James Brown, Duane Eddy, Pat Boone, The Outlaws, Dwight Yoakam, Steppenwolf, Bill Monroe, Exile, The Judds, Orleans, Willie Nelson, Carl Perkins, Vince Gill, George Thorogood, Emmylou Harris, Alabama, the Allman Brothers, Link Wray, Ted Nugent, Billy Joel, the Marshall Tucker Band, Solomon Burke, Little Richard, B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eugene Fodor, Woody Herman, and Bobby Jones and the New Life Singers.

When you hear a classic Charlie Daniels Band performance like “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” you hear music that knows no clear genre. Is it a folk tale? A southern boogie? A country fiddle tune? An electric rock anthem? The answer is, yes to all of that and more. And the same goes for “In America,” “Uneasy Rider,” “The South ‘s Gonna Do It,” “Long Haired Country Boy,” “Still in Saigon,” “The Legend of Wooley Swamp,” and the rest of a catalog that spans more than 35 years of record making and represents more than 18 million copies in sales.

Having been born in North Carolina, his roots have always been slightly more to the Country side of music. An astute businessman as well as talented musician, Charlie launched Blue Hat Records in 1997 with his longtime personal manager David Corlew.  Over the years, the label has released such memorable albums as Blues Hat, Tailgate Party, Road Dogs, Fiddle Fire: 25 Years of the Charlie Daniels Band and his first bluegrass album 2005’s Songs From the Longleaf Pines and 2007’s album Deuces, featuring duets with Brad Paisley, Gretchen Wilson, Bonnie Bramlett, Travis Tritt, Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Brenda Lee and Darius Rucker. 

In April 1998, top stars and two former Presidents paid tribute to Daniels when he was named the recipient of the Pioneer Award at the Academy of Country Music’s annual nationally televised ceremonies:

“In his time he’s played everything from rock to jazz, folk to western swing, and honky tonk to award winning gospel,” former President Jimmy Carter said. “In Charlie’s own words, ‘Let there be harmony. Let there be fun and 12 notes of music to make us all one.”

“Charlie’s love of music is only surpassed by his love of people, especially the American people,” former President Gerald Ford said. “For almost five decades, he’s traveled this land from coast to coast singing about the things that concern the American people. Tonight, the Academy of Country Music’s Pioneer Award is presented to a supremely talented compassionate and proud American, and a fair to middlin’ golfer, too!”

With an unerring instinct for the universal ties that bind people together and an equal abhorrence for the intolerance and fear that do the opposite, Charlie Daniels has kept the specifics of his cultural heritage as the soul of the CDB music that has impacted lives of everyday people everywhere.

“It’s purely American music with something for everyone,” he said. “At least that’s what I’ve hoped for in my 40 plus years in music.

Charlie Daniels died July 6, 2020 from a stroke. He was 83.

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Otis Rush 9/2018

Otis Rush was born near Philadelphia, Mississippi on April 29, 1934 during the Great Depression, the son of sharecroppers Julia Campbell Boyd and Otis C. Rush. He was one of seven children and worked on the farm throughout his childhood. His mother regularly took him out of school so that he could add to the family income when the cotton was high and white landowners wanted extra labor.

Music was young Otis solace. He sang in gospel choirs and taught himself to play guitar and harmonica, playing on street corners. “This is where my soul came from. This is where my faith started.” He said of Neshoba County.

Determined not to spend his life in the cotton fields, he moved north to Chicago in 1949 at the age of 14, working in stockyards and steel mills and driving a horse drawn coal wagon, hanging out in the city’s blues clubs at night. Continue reading Otis Rush 9/2018

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Denise LaSalle 1/2018

Denise LaSalle (84) – Reigning Queen of the Blues – was born on July 16, 1934 near Sidon (The Island), Mississippi and raised in Belzoni.  The youngest of eight children, she was actually born Ora D. (or Ora Dee) Allen. Her family was a family of share croppers, and she sang in church choirs before moving to Chicago to live with her oldest brother in early 1947, where she sat in with R&B musicians and blues cats, wrote songs, influenced by country music as well as the blues, before winning a recording contract with Chess Records in 1967. Her first single, “A Love Reputation” was a modest regional hit.
She established an independent production company, Crajon, with her then husband Bill Jones. Her song “Trapped By A Thing Called Love” (1971) was released on Detroit-based Westbound Records and reached #1 on the national R&B chart and #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The song ranked at #85 on the 1971 year-end chart. The RIAA gold disc award was made on November 30, 1971 for a million sales.
She then wrote successful follow-ups, “Now Run And Tell That” and “Man Sized Job” which made #3 and #4 in the R&B Top Ten and also charted in the Hot 100.Her early hits were recorded at the Hi recording studios in Memphis, operated by Willie Mitchell, using the cream of southern session players. She continued to have hits on Westbound and then on ABC Records through the mid-1970s, including “Love Me Right” (#10 R&B, #80 pop) She continued to produce and perform live. Her co-penned song, “Married, But Not to Each Other” (#16 R&B) was included in the 1979 The Best of Barbara Mandrell, compilation album. In 1976, she moved to Jackson, Tennessee and signed a contract with ABC Records. On ABC she had another hit, “Love Me Right”. ABC was taken over by MCA, and LaSalle made three albums for MCA. Her 1979 album include “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and she released “I’m So Hot” album in 1980. Rapper husband Super Wolf recorded rap song “Super Wolf Can Do It” also. She continued to perform live and to produce.

In the early 1980s, she signed as a singer and songwriter with Malaco Records, for whom she released a string of critically acclaimed albums over more than 20 years, starting with Lady in the Street (1983) and Right Place, Right Time (1984). Both albums became successful among soul blues, R&B and soul fans and on urban radio stations. In 1985, she enjoyed her only recognition in the UK Singles Chart, when her cover version of Rockin’ Sidney’s “My Toot Toot” reached #6.

LaSalle appeared at the 1984 and 1993 versions of the Long Beach Blues Festival, and also in 1993, she performed at the San Francisco Blues Festival. Her album Smokin’ In Bed (1997) sold well. After more than a decade away, when she recorded three albums with small Memphis-based soul-blues label, Ecko, she returned to Malaco for her 2010 outing called “24 Hour Woman”. She continues to work as a live performer, particularly at festivals, and more recently has branched out into the gospel genre. In 2011, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

In 2013 and 2014, LaSalle was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the ‘Soul Blues Female Artist’ category. On June 6, 2015, LaSalle was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.

A blues and R&B/soul singer, songwriter, and record producer, she had been recognized as the “Queen of the Blues” since the death of Koko Taylor in 2009.

LaSalle lived with her husband, James E. Wolfe, (Super Wolfe) in Jackson, Tennessee, where she opened a restaurant called Blues Legend Café. The restaurant was located at 436 E. Main Street, but has since closed.

After suffering from heart problems, and complications from a fall resulting in her right leg being amputated, LaSalle died on January 8, 2018, at the age of 83.

With a discography of 35 plus albums and 50 plus singles between 1967 and 2010, Denise LaSalle left a big imprint on roots music.

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Lonnie Brooks 4/2017

chicago blues manApril 1, 2017 – Lonnie Brooks, Chicago bluesman who achieved fame in the late 70s, was born Lee Baker Jr. on December 18, 1933 in Dubuisson, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana. He learned to play blues from his banjo-picking grandfather but did not think about a career in music until after he moved to Port Arthur, Texas, in the early 1950s. There he heard live performances by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, Long John Hunter, Johnny Copeland and others and began to think about making money from music.

He focused on the guitar comparatively late in life, when he was already in his 20s. But he learned fast and a little while later, Award winning Zydeco king Clifton Chenier heard Brooks strumming his guitar on his front porch in Port Arthur and offered him a job in his touring band. Continue reading Lonnie Brooks 4/2017

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Bobby Bland 6/2013

BOBBY BLAND June 23, 2013 – Bobby Bland was born Robert Calvin Brooks  in Rosemark, Tennessee on January 27, 1930.

Sometimes called “Lion of the Blues” and “Sinatra of the Blues”, Bobby Bland earned his enduring blues superstar status the hard way: without a guitar, harmonica, or any other instrument to fall back upon. All Bland had to offer was his magnificent voice, a tremendously powerful instrument in his early heyday, injected with charisma and melisma to spare. Just ask his legion of female fans, who deemed him a sex symbol late into his career.

For all his promise, Bland’s musical career ignited slowly. He was a founding member of the Beale Streeters, the fabled Memphis aggregation that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace. Singles for Chess in 1951 (produced by Sam Phillips) and Modern the next year bombed, but that didn’t stop local DJ David Mattis from cutting Bland on a couple of 1952 singles for his fledgling Duke logo.

Continue reading Bobby Bland 6/2013