Blues Birthday – Gary Moore 4th April 1952
Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952 – 6 February 2011) was an Irish musician, singer and songwriter. Over the course of his career he played in various groups and performed an eclectic range of music including blues, blues rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and jazz fusion. Influenced by Peter Green, Jim Hendrix and others, […]
Blues Matters Remembers: Janis Joplin October 4th
Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul, and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and “electric” stage presence. In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at […]
Blues Birthday – Roy Buchanan, Sept 23rd 1939
Leroy “Roy” Buchanan (September 23, 1939 – August 14, 1988) was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan worked as a sideman and as a solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career and two later solo albums that made it to the Billboard chart. Highly Influential […]
Blues Birthday – B.B. King, Sept 16th 1925
Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato and staccato picking that influenced many later blues electric guitar players. AllMusic recognized King as “the single […]
Blues Birthday – Snooky Pryor, Sept 15th 1919
James Edward “Snooky” Pryor (September 15, 1919 or 1921 – October 18, 2006) was an American Chicago blues harmonica player. He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his hands along with the harmonica, although on his earliest records, in the late 1940s, he did […]
Blues Birthday – Charles Brown, Sept 13th 1922
Tony Russell “Charles” Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999) was an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced blues performance in the 1940s and 1950s. Between 1949 and 1952, Brown had seven Top 10 hits in the U.S. Billboard R&B chart. His best-selling recordings included “Driftin’ Blues” and “Merry […]
Blues Birthday – Barbeque Bob Sept 11th 1902
Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob (September 11, 1902 – October 21, 1931), was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname was derived from his working as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the two extant photographs of him show him playing a guitar and wearing a full-length white apron and […]
Blues Birthday – Otis Redding, Sept 9th 1941
Otis Ray Redding Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the greatest singers in the history of American popular music and a seminal artist in soul music and rhythm and blues. Redding’s style of singing gained inspiration from the gospel music that preceded […]
Blues Birthday: Louis Armstrong 4th August 1901
Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed “Satchmo”, “Satch”, and “Pops”, was an American trumpeter and vocalist who is among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence […]
Blues Birthday: Bullmoose Jackson – April 22nd 1919
Benjamin Clarence “Bull Moose” Jackson (April 22, 1919 – July 31, 1989) was an American blues and rhythm-and-blues singer and saxophonist, who was most successful in the late 1940s. He is considered a performer of dirty blues because of the suggestive nature of some of his songs, such as “I Want a Bowlegged Woman” and […]
