News & Updates — blues

Happy birthday to the great blues pianist/singer/songwriter icon John Chatman aka Memphis Slim. With his permanent move to France in 1963 he may very well have been the first truly international blues superstar. The son of a musician in Memphis, he made his first records at 25 for Okeh under his father's name Pete Chatman. He toured around the South before hitting Chicago in '39, hooking up in a duo with Big Bill Broonzy and working as a session pianist for Bluebird Records. In the mid '40s he started using saxophone and drumkit in his band, now called The House...

One of the three great Kings of blues guitar, along with BB and Albert, Freddie King was a commanding singer and an awesome electric guitarist with fast fingers. He was a huge influence on Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and other pale-faced blues-rockers. Originally from Dallas, he started playing guitar at six. He moved to Chicago as a teenager and started absorbing all the killer blues happening in the city. He started playing in bands in the early '50s and worked with Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood Jr and others. When King got the call to cut...

Happy birthday to that great hard bop pianist Horace Silver! He was of Cape Verdean heritage but grew up in Connecticut. He studied classical music as well as taking in the music of Cabo Verde that his father taught him. As a teenager he gigged on both piano and tenor sax. After playing with Stan Getz in Hartford in '50 he went on tour with him. He moved to NYC in '51 and started playing with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Lou Donaldson. In '52 he began working for Blue Note Records, as a session pianist and as a recording...

A self-taught tenor saxophonist (and activist) from Chicago, Clifford Jordan was underrated and not a flashy type but he enjoyed a long career in jazz, traveling all over the world and lending his hand to various non-profits. While still in Chicago he played R&B, as well as bop with Max Roach and Sonny Stitt. In '57 he moved to NYC, and cut his first of three albums for Blue Note, the classic Blowing In From Chicago, co-led with Sun Ra's tenor man John Gilmore and featuring members of the Jazz Messengers. In the late '50s he worked in groups led...

One of the fathers of rock & roll and a top blues shouter and dancer in his day, here is the guy Elvis Presley stole his stage moves from. From Omaha, Wynonie Harris got big locally in the '30s and took his show on the road: Kansas City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Harlem, Nashville and Texas were some key touch-down points. In '44 he joined Lucky Millinder's band and "Who Threw The Whiskey In The Well" was a #1 hit in '45. After that success he signed as an artist with Philo and hired Johnny Otis to put his band together, which...