Bonny B.

Last updated
Bonny B. playing the harmonica Bonny B.jpg
Bonny B. playing the harmonica

Bonny B. (born Su Pheaktra Bonnyface Chanmongkhon, July 20, 1974, Cambodia) is a Cambodian-Swiss blues musician and harmonica player. [1]

Contents

Early life

In 1978, his family fled Cambodia, pursued by the Khmer Rouge, and took refuge in the jungle near the Thai border. [1] After three days and three nights running, with no food, they finally found safety in Thailand. In 1979, with the help of Catholic sisters, the family arrived in Fribourg, Switzerland, and asked for political asylum. He started school in 1980 and fought to be accepted and to find a place in the community.

From 1988 to 1991, when he was in high school, he started to like the harmonica and country music: "this time I copied and listened to many country CDs." The school organized a day of entertainment and "hired two bluesmen including one playing the harmonica and the blues came like that. My first CDs were by John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, and all the old black bluesmen of the 50s." He left school and from 1992 to 1995 trained in making pastries and candy, an activity that allowed him to support himself, but music was playing an increasingly important role in his life.

Career

In 1992 he formed his first band, Bonny B. and Spirit of the Blues. They played their first gig two months after they met. Then followed Born to Blues in 1994, the Bonny B. Blues Band in 1996 and the Bonny B. Band in 1998. On the side, he also played in a duo with his brother Michael on guitar. He was also engaged as a sideman with Tom Cat Blake, JC Little and Kevin Flynn, among others. With these various formations, he played 50 to 100 concerts a year in Switzerland and abroad.

In 1994 he opened a school for harmonica and singing. In May 1998, Bonny decided to go to Chicago in search of the blues: "I had to travel there as a pilgrimage." Speaking almost no English, he jammed with Louisiana Red, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Johnson, Kenny Neal, John Primer and Bernard Allison at clubs such as the legendary Blue Chicago, Buddy Guy's Legend and Koko Taylor's. Short of money, he played in bars and on the streets of Chicago to pay for his return ticket.

Albums and concerts

In 1999, Bonny decided to record an album. He teamed up with his old friend, drummer Sal Lombardo, and guitarist Laurent Poget. This collaboration resulted in the album Cambodia, released in Switzerland in March 2000. In March 2001, he released the album Something's Wrong in Europe on Dixiefrog. It is also found in several blues compilations (notably Levis, Blues 2002 compilation). In 2002, he worked with several American artists, including Vic Pitts, Michael J. Robinson, Jesse James King, Sugar Blue, Mark Woodward, Napoleon Washington. In March 2003, he released his second album, If This Is Life, and signed with Universal Music and its sponsor Hohner Harmonica. "We told him that he is one of the best harmonica players and singers from Switzerland. Bonny B. has no equal to breathe the warmth of blues concerts in Switzerland or abroad."

By October 2004, Bonny B. was performing 120 concerts per year. He signed his 1000th contract and traveled throughout Switzerland. In the spring of 2005, he released his third album, I Got the Blues, on the Dixiefrog label and Hard Board. In 2005, he released his debut album Something's Wrong in the U.S. and Canada with the Dixiefrog label. Claude Nobs discovered the last album by Bonny B. and asked him to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival with Alice Cooper. On the side, he decided to explore the blues in public schools and colleges throughout western Switzerland, as part of educational concerts on the history and evolution of the blues. In 2006, he planned to open a school in Cambodia for underprivileged children, financed by the sale of his latest album and concert support.

During his "James Brown Tour" in 2007 (when he was nicknamed the Asian James Brown by the press), he called himself Bonny B. Brown, in honor of one of its masters.

Other achievements

Construction of the school in Cambodia began in November 2007. He has garnered support from his concerts in the sum of 35 000 Swiss francs to complete the project.

In 2008, Bonny B. was hired by Hohner Harmonica as manager of harmonica workshops in all its music stores in Switzerland. He formed his first gospel choir, the IRF-Gospel Singers and organized gospel singing on Stage Giez. Bonny B. was hired as a teacher at the harmonica blues school ETM in Geneva .

On February 28, 2009, on a bet, he became the only harmonica player in the world to play the harmonica for 24 hours nonstop (a Guinness World Record), to raise money for his school in Cambodia. Also in 2009, the first Bonny B. Blues Club opened in Fribourg, where he organized blues concerts with American artists.

His second blues club, the Rock Bottom Blues & Jazz Club, opened in Giez in 2010, in collaboration with Fabienne Decker. In March 2010, Bonny B. recorded his eighth album, which was produced in collaboration with Bob Margolin. He created a blues festival in Giez, held on September 10–12 of that year.

In 2011, he toured with the first edition of the Blues Legend Tour, with Finis Tasby, Bob Margolin, Dave Riley and Bob Stroger. He also released the album Bonny B. Live at Blues Club Fribourg.

Related Research Articles

Johnny Winter American blues guitarist and singer

John Dawson Winter III was an American singer and guitarist. Winter was known for his high-energy blues rock albums and live performances in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also produced three Grammy Award–winning albums for blues singer and guitarist Muddy Waters. After his time with Waters, Winter recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 63rd in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Pink Anderson American blues singer and guitarist

Pinkney "Pink" Anderson was an American blues singer and guitarist.

Little Walter American blues harmonica player

Marion Walter Jacobs, known as Little Walter, was an American blues musician, singer, and songwriter, whose revolutionary approach to the harmonica had a strong impact on succeeding generations, earning him comparisons to such seminal artists as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. He was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, the first and, to date, only artist to be inducted specifically as a harmonica player.

Snooky Pryor Musical artist

James Edward "Snooky" Pryor 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 not use this method.

David "Honeyboy" Edwards American blues guitarist and singer

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi.

Pinetop Perkins American blues pianist

Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Charlie Musselwhite American blues musician

Charles Douglas Musselwhite is an American electric blues harmonica player and bandleader, one of the white bluesmen who came to prominence in the early 1960s, along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. He has often been identified as a "white bluesman". Musselwhite was reportedly the inspiration for Elwood Blues; the character played by Dan Aykroyd in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.

Lucky Peterson American musician

Judge Kenneth Peterson, known professionally as Lucky Peterson, was an American musician who played contemporary blues, fusing soul, R&B, gospel and rock and roll. He played guitar and keyboards. Music journalist Tony Russell, in his book The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray has said, "he may be the only blues musician to have had national television exposure in short pants."

Ramon Goose Musical artist

Ramon Goose is an English guitarist, singer and producer, known for his work with the West African Blues Project and the hip hop blues band NuBlues, for his mastery of the slide guitar, and for producing albums for American blues artists. As a solo artist he has toured across the world performing concerts and released several albums to critical acclaim.

Tad Robinson Musical artist

Tad Robinson is an American singer, harmonica player, and songwriter.

Fabio Treves Italian blues musician (born 1949)

Fabio Treves is an Italian blues musician. Treves's nickname is "il Puma di Lambrate", mimicking the British bluesman John Mayall, known as the "Manchester's Lion". Lambrate is the quarter of Milan where Treves grew up.

David Barrett is an American blues harmonica player, author and teacher.

Hip Linkchain Musical artist

Willie Richard, who performed as Hip Linkchain, was an American Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Colin Dussault's Blues Project is a Cleveland, Ohio, based five piece blues-rock group best known for songs such as "Little Chicken Wing Girl," "Good Booty & BBQ," "O.J. Simpson's DNA," and "Tidioute, Pennsylvania Revisited;" and their 1998 remake of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain". The band's CD releases, live shows, and work schedule have resulted in group being called the "Hardest Working Band in Northern Ohio. Their tag line is "Our Music is better than it sounds"."

Bishop Dready Manning is an American guitarist, harmonica player, singer, and songwriter who plays gospel music infused with Piedmont blues elements. He is also the founder of St. Mark Holiness Church in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and a North Carolina Arts Council Folk Heritage Award winner.

Rick Estrin & The Nightcats Musical artist

Rick Estrin & the Nightcats are an American electric blues band formed in 2008.

Bob Corritore is an American blues harmonica player, record producer, blues radio show host and owner of The Rhythm Room, a music venue in Phoenix, Arizona. Corritore is a recipient of several industry honors, including a Blues Music Award, Blues Blast Music Award, Living Blues Award and a Keeping The Blues Alive Award and more. His accomplishments include producing one album that was nominated for a Grammy Award and contributing harmonica on another.

Fabrizio Poggi is a singer and harmonica player. A Grammy Awards nominee who has received the Hohner Lifetime Award, and has been two times Blues Music Awards nominee, Jimi Awards nominee, and during his long career has recorded twenty two albums. He has performed in the US and Europe with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Garth Hudson of the Band, Steve Cropper, Charlie Musselwhite, Ronnie Earl, John P. Hammond, Marcia Ball, Guy Davis, Eric Bibb, Flaco Jimenez, Little Feat and many others.

Travis Leonard Blaylock, better known as Harmonica Slim, was an American blues harmonicist, singer and songwriter. He had some commercial success in the 1950s; recordings of two songs he wrote, "Mary Helen" and "You Better Believe It", were modest hits. He released a total of six singles and toured alongside Percy Mayfield, Harmonica Fats, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton and Ray Charles. His debut album was released in 1969. By the late 1970s, he had stopped playing the blues.

George Higgs Musical artist

George Higgs was an American Piedmont blues acoustic guitarist, harmonicist, singer and songwriter. He recorded three albums in his lifetime, although he spent over sixty years performing regularly, mainly in his home State. In 1993, Higgs was granted the North Carolina Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council.

References

  1. 1 2 "Une Histoire, Un Bluesman: Bonny B." (PDF). Chablaisblues.ch. Retrieved 1 November 2013.