Robert Lee 'Chick' Willis

guitarist, singer

 

24.09.1934 - 07.12.2013

Robert Lee "Chick" Willis was an American blues singer and guitarist, who performed and recorded from the 1950s to the 2000s. He was born in Cabaniss, Monroe County, Georgia, the cousin of Chuck Willis. He served in the military in the early 1950s, before working as a chauffeur for Chuck Willis during his heyday. He won a talent show at the Magnolia Ballroom in Atlanta and made his first record in 1956, with the Ebb Records' single "You're Mine". Initially, he only sang, but learned guitar while touring with his cousin; Guitar Slim was one of his foremost influences.

After Chuck's death in 1958, Willis played with Elmore James, recording singles through the 1960s for Atco and other labels. His 1972 release, "Stoop Down Baby Let Your Daddy See", was a jukebox hit but secured no radio airplay, due to its sexually explicit content. The song was one he had developed when working at a carnival show, where he would tease passers-by with ribald rhymes. Some of his later recordings reworked the song. Another of his dirty blues recordings was his cover of "Mother Fuyer", which appeared on his 1972 album Stoop Down Baby... Let Your Daddy See, and released as the B-side to his "Stoop Down Baby Let Your Daddy See" single on La Val Records. Willis claimed songwriting credits.

He released a steady stream of albums on Ichiban Records in the 1980s and 1990s, and continued to record into the 2000s.

Artie 'Blues Boy' White

guitarist, singer 

 

16.04.1937 - 20.04.2013

Artie "Blues Boy" White was an American blues and soul singer and guitarist based in Chicago, who was described as "one of the foremost Chicago practitioners of Southern Soul music". Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, he first began performing in his teens with a gospel group, the Harps of David, before moving to Chicago in 1956. He continued to sing gospel in the Full Gospel Wonders, but switched to perform blues music in Chicago clubs in the early 1960s. After releasing several singles on small labels, he had his only chart hit in 1977 with "(You Are My) Leanin' Tree", written by Chicago songwriter Bob Jones and released on the ALTee label, which reached number 99 on the Billboard R&B chart.

For a while he ran a blues club, Bootsy's Show Lounge, and later another venue, the New Club Bootsy’s. He continued to perform and record, releasing the album Blues Boy on the Ronn label in 1985 and thereafter adopting the title as his sobriquet. In 1987, he moved to the Ichiban label, where he recorded seven albums of soul blues, including more of Bob Jones' songs and, on the 1989 album Thangs Got to Change, a collaboration with his musical inspiration, Little Milton Campbell. He signed for the Waldoxy label, a subsidiary of Malaco Records, in 1994, and released the album Different Shades of Blue, which was nominated for the Jackson Blues Award. His most popular singles in the 1990s included “I'm Gonna Marry My Mother-In-Law” (1994) and “Your Man Is Home Tonight” (1997). In 1997 he released the album Back Home to Clarksdale: A Tribute to Muddy Waters, followed by Can We Get Together (1999).

He became well known on the Chicago blues scene for his flamboyant costumes and stage presence, toured internationally, and headlined the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival. In 2001 he released the album Can't Get Enough on his own AChillTown label. He became ill later in the decade, developing multiple health issues and increasingly becoming confined to a wheelchair, but returned to occasional performances such as a concert to honor Buddy Guy in 2008.

James Henry 'Jimmy' Dawkins

guitarist, singer 

 

24.10.1936 - 10.04.2013

James Henry “Jimmy” Dawkins was an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist and singer. He is generally considered to have been a practitioner of the "West Side sound" of Chicago blues. Dawkins was born in Tchula, Mississippi. He moved to Chicago in 1955, where he worked in a box factory, started to play in local blues clubs, and gained a reputation as a session musician.

In 1969, thanks to the efforts of his friend Magic Sam, his first album, Fast Fingers, was released by Delmark Records. It won the Grand Prix du Disque from the Hot Club de France. In 1971, Delmark released his second album, All for Business, with the singer Andrew Odom and the guitarist Otis Rush.

Dawkins toured in the late 1970s, backed up by James Solberg (of Luther Allison and the Nighthawks) on guitar and Jon Preizler (the Lamont Cranston Band, Luther Allison, and Albert King), a Seattle-based Hammond B-3 organ player known for his soulful jazz-influenced style. Other musicians that toured with Dawkins in the late 1970s were Jimi Schutte (drums), Sylvester Boines (bass), Rich Kirch and Billy Flynn (guitars). Dawkins toured in Europe with this group of musicians. He also toured in Japan and recorded more albums in the United States and Europe. He contributed a column to the blues magazine Living Blues.

In the 1980s he released few recordings but started his own record label, Leric Records, and was more interested in promoting other artists, including Taildragger, Queen Sylvia Embry, Little Johnny Christian and Nora Jean Bruso (née Wallace).

Graham Anthony Barnes (Alvin Lee)

guitarist, singer (Ten Years After) 

 

19.12.1944 - 06.03.2013

Alvin Lee, born Graham Anthony Barnes, was an English singer and guitarist, best known as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist of the blues rock band Ten Years After. He was born in Nottingham and attended the Margaret Glen-Bott School in Wollaton which was a precursor to comprehensive schools with grammar and secondary modern streams. He began playing guitar at the age of 13. In 1960, Lee along with Leo Lyons formed the core of the band Ten Years After. He was influenced by his parents' collection of jazz and blues records, but it was the advent of rock and roll that sparked his interest.

Lee's performance at the Woodstock Festival was captured on film in the documentary of the event, and his 'lightning-fast' playing helped catapult him to stardom. Soon the band was playing arenas and stadiums around the globe. The film brought Lee's music to a worldwide audience, although he later lamented that he missed the lost freedom and spiritual dedication with his earlier public.

Lee was named "the Fastest guitarist in the West", and considered a precursor to shred-style playing that would develop in the 1980s.

Ten Years After had success, releasing ten albums together, but by 1973, Lee was feeling limited by the band's style. Moving to Columbia Records had resulted in a radio hit song, "I'd Love To Change the World", but Lee preferred blues-rock to the pop to which the label steered them. He left the group after their second Columbia LP. With American Christian rock pioneer Mylon LeFevre, along with guests George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Mick Fleetwood, he recorded and released On the Road to Freedom, an acclaimed album that was at the forefront of country rock. Also in 1973 he sat in on the Jerry Lee Lewis double album The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists recorded in London featuring many other guest stars including Albert Lee, Peter Frampton and Rory Gallagher. A year later, in response to a dare, Lee formed Alvin Lee & Company to play a show at the Rainbow in London and released it as a double live album, In Flight. Various members of the band continued on with Lee for his next two albums, Pump Iron! and Let It Rock. In late 1975, he played guitar for a couple of tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. He finished out the 1970s with an outfit called "Ten Years Later", with Tom Compton on drums and Mick Hawksworth on bass, which released two albums, Rocket Fuel (1978) and Ride On (1979), and toured extensively throughout Europe and the United States.

The 1980s brought another change in Lee's direction, with two albums that were collaborations with Rare Bird's Steve Gould, and a tour with the former John Mayall and Rolling Stones' guitarist Mick Taylor joining his band.

Lee's overall musical output includes more than twenty albums, including 1987's Detroit Diesel, 1989's About Time, recorded in Memphis with producer Terry Manning, and the back to back 1990s collections of Zoom and Nineteen Ninety-Four (US title I Hear You Rockin'). Guest artists on both albums included George Harrison.

In Tennessee, recorded with Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana, was released in 2004. Lee's last album, Still on the Road to Freedom, was released in September 2012.

Ann Rabson

guitarist, pianist, singer (Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women) 

 

12.04.1945 - 30.01.2013

Ann Rabson was an American blues vocalist, pianist and guitar player. She was a solo recording artist signed to Alligator Records and was a member of Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women, an acoustic blues band that disbanded amicably in 2009.

Born in New York City in 1945, Rabson had been playing and singing the blues professionally since 1962. She also performed as a solo act and with various other bands.

She had been nominated eight times for a Blues Music Award (formerly W.C. Handy Award) as Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year. Her first solo album, Music Makin' Mama, was nominated as Album of the Year in both the Traditional Blues and Acoustic Blues categories, and her composition "Elevator Man" was nominated as Song of the Year.

Rabson's second solo album, Struttin' My Stuff, was released by M.C. Records in September 2000. Her joint album with Bob Margolin, Not Alone, won a Blues Music Award in 2013 in the 'Acoustic Album' category.