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Explore Larry Schapiro's discography including top tracks, albums, and reviews. Learn all about Larry Schapiro on AllMusic.
- The Blues Magazine
- Joanne Shaw Taylor: The Black Country connection. She was influenced by heavyweights from Janis Joplin to Tom Waits, and when this gunslinger first opened her mouth on White Sugar, her voice had instant gravitas.
- Dani Wilde: Wilde about the girl with the golden voice. The Brighton-based singer first burst on to the scene a few years ago, as one of a new generation of guitarists, but it’s her powerful voice that sets her apart from the rest of the crowd.
- Long John Baldry: One of London’s blues pioneers… John William “Long John” Baldry was a 6ft 7in mover and shaker who helped ignite the British blues boom in the early 1960s.
- John Belushi: A comic with force-10 charisma. One of the first things John Belushi said, upon meeting Dan Aykroyd in 1973, was: “I don’t listen to much blues.”
- The Blues Magazine
- BB King: There’s a reason he’s the king of the blues. Who else? With due respect to the towering voices of the blues – the rasp of Wolf, the drawl of Muddy, the croak of Hooker – no one has ever opened their mouth to such earth-shattering effect as Riley B King.
- Etta James: The female blues singer. “I learned to ‘sing like your life depends upon it,’” Etta James said. And she sure did, for Etta could beg, scream and shout, and was dubbed the first queen of soul some 10 years before Aretha Franklin.
- Robert Plant: The golden god with the 24-carat shriek. If there’s a more thrilling opening gambit than the first 10 seconds of Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, we’ve not heard it.
- Muddy Waters: The hoochie coochie man with the virile baritone who fathered Chicago electric blues. The father of modern Chicago blues, McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters, was an expert slide guitarist who transposed country Delta blues to urban electric, but his rich baritone voice was his greatest asset and instantly recognisable.
Feb 6, 2023 · In the 1920s US, glamorous, funny black female singers were the blues' first – and revolutionary hitmakers. Why were they then relegated to the sidelines, asks Dorian Lynskey.
- B.B. King
- Muddy Waters
- Billie Holiday
- Ray Charles
- Jimi Hendrix
- Etta James
- Otis Redding
- Nina Simone
- Janis Joplin
- Robert Johnson
Born Riley B. King, singer and guitarist B.B. King got his start in Mississippi on a plantation near Indianola. At twenty-two, King hitched a ride to Memphis to launch his musical career. His career began to take off in 1948 after he adopted the name B.B. King as a catchy radio moniker. By the mid-fifties, King was touring nationally. Over the next...
Singer and legendary blues guitaristMcKinley Morganfield was born in 1915 in Issaquena, Mississippi. By the early 1940s, he was a semi-successful traveling musician. He made his way north to Chicago in 1943. That year he was gifted his first electric guitar. In Chicago, Waters started recording music for record companies like Columbia and RCA. He w...
Born in Baltimore in 1915, Eleanora Fagan knew from an early age that she wanted to be a singer. By 1929, she was playing jazz clubs in New York, where she adopted the stage name Billie Holiday. At eighteen, Holiday met a producer named John Hammond and after that, her career took off at lightning speed. She linked up with pianist Teddy Wilson and ...
The legendary Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia in 1930. When he was only six years old, Charles was rendered blind due to glaucoma. At fifteen, he left school and started playing for dance bands around Florida. He dropped his last name because he did not want to be confused with the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. From there, Charles would ...
Born 1942 in Seattle, he was first called Johnny Allen Hendrix and then James Marshall Hendrix. Hendrix was drawn to music early on, teaching himself to play by ear. He bought his first guitar in 1958 and joined his first band soon after. By 1967, he moved to London, changed his name to Jimi Hendrix, and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Their de...
Jamesetta Hawkins was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, California. She started vocal lessons at the tender age of five and soon became the star of her church choir. In 1954, the sixteen-year-old girl was discovered by the musician John Otis. She recorded her first single that same year. She soon signed with Modern Records and began a string of hit reco...
Born in 1942 in Dawson, Georgia, Otis Ray Redding Jr. moved to Macon, Georgia as a young boy. He traveled to LA in 1960 and began releasing hit singles. He released These Arms of Mine in 1963 and found fame as a blues musician. In 1965 he recorded the seminal album Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul in just one day. Over the next two years, he woul...
Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Little Eunice could play piano by ear at the early age of three, and her parents encouraged her talents. Eunice began teaching music to young students to make ends meet, and in 1954 she auditioned to play at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City. She soon made a name for herself ...
Singer songwriter Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1943. But, she left Texas for San Francisco in 1963 where she made a living as a folk singer. Around this time, she developed an unhealthy relationship with drinking and illicit drugs. She returned to Port Arthur to recuperate from her vices, but Joplin was back in San Francisco by 19...
Robert Johnson grew up with his mother in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, but eventually, he moved to Memphis to live with his father. He made a living as a traveling musician, and by 1936 Johnson caught the eye of a talent scout named H.C. Speir. He recorded a handful of his songs from the road there. These recordings became a regional hit, selling thous...
- 5 min
Near-comprehensive overview of the blues from the mid-1920's through the early 1980's. There are a few notable omissions: we get nothing by Blind Blake or B.B. King (presumably for reasons of copyright), and Mamie Smith's 'Crazy Blues'--the first blues record ever released and a smash hit in 1920--is not here.
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Composer and arranger Jon Schapiro celebrates the 3 score anniversary of Miles Davis’ legendary Kind of Blue album by taking each tune, tweaking it and giving it new dimensions and colors.
