Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s by African-Americans from roots in African-American work songs and spirituals. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
William Thomas "Champion Jack" Dupree was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist and singer. His nickname was derived from his early career as a boxer.
John Len Chatman, known professionally as Memphis Slim, was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings.
Albert Clifton Ammons was an American pianist and player of boogie-woogie, a blues style popular from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s.
The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in June, that features three days of performances by top-tier blues musicians, both old favorites and the up-and-coming. It is hosted by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and always occurs in early June. Until 2017, the event always took place at and around Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park, adjacent to the Lake Michigan waterfront east of the Loop in Chicago. In 2017, the festival was moved to the nearby Millennium Park.
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.
Morris Holt, known as Magic Slim, was an American blues singer and guitarist. Born at Torrance, near Grenada, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers, he followed blues greats such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf to Chicago, developing his own place in the Chicago blues scene.
Joseph Christopher Liggins, Jr. was an American R&B, jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s. His band appeared often on the Billboard magazine charts. The band's biggest hit was "The Honeydripper", released in 1945. Joe Liggins was the older brother of R&B performer Jimmy Liggins.
Bianca Taylor Ryan is an American musician, singer and songwriter from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ryan was the first winner of NBC's America's Got Talent at the age of eleven. Singing two Broadway show tunes along the way, Ryan was announced as the winner of season one on August 17. Her self-titled first album was released later in 2006, followed by two Christmas albums. Two singles followed in 2007 and 2010.
Music Maker Relief Foundation is an American non-profit, based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Music Maker Relief Foundation was founded in 1994 by Tim and Denise Duffy to "help the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern music gain recognition and meet their day-to-day needs. Music Maker presents these musical traditions to the world so American culture will flourish and be preserved for future generations."
Debuting in 1973, the San Francisco Blues Festival was one of the longest running blues festival in the United States. Tom Mazzolini, the event's producer, founded the blues festival to educate the public about the history and evolution of the blues. Many of the performers at the early concerts were the pioneers and originators of the West Coast blues sound.
Christian Dozzler is an Austrian blues, boogie woogie and zydeco multi-instrumentalist and singer, now based in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He plays piano, harmonica, accordion and organ, and writes most of his recorded material. He has been nicknamed "Vienna Slim".
Lil' Ed Williams is an American blues slide guitarist, singer and songwriter. With his backing band, the Blues Imperials, he has built up a loyal following.
Mark Hummel is an American blues harmonica player, vocalist, songwriter, and long-time bandleader of the Blues Survivors. Since 1991, Hummel has produced the Blues Harmonica Blowout tour, of which he is also a featured performer. The shows have featured blues harmonica players such as James Cotton, Carey Bell, John Mayall and Charlie Musselwhite. Although he is typically identified as performing West Coast blues, Hummel is also proficient in Delta blues, Chicago blues, swing and jazz styles. Hummel also plays with the Golden State Lone Star Revue, Mark Hummel & Deep Basement Shakers, as well as the current edition of the Blues Survivors.
Willie D. Warren was an American electric blues guitarist, bass player and singer. In a long career, he worked with Otis Rush, Al Benson, Little Sonny Cooper, David Honeyboy Edwards, Baby Boy Warren, Guitar Slim, Freddie King, Jimmy Reed, Morris Pejoe, Bobo Jenkins and Jim McCarty. One of Warren's better-known recordings was "Baby Likes to Boogie".
Lawrence Laury was an American boogie-woogie, blues, gospel and jazz pianist and singer. Laury worked with Memphis Slim and Mose Vinson but did not record his debut album until he was in his late sixties. He appeared in two films; Great Balls of Fire!, the biopic about Jerry Lee Lewis' early career, and the documentary Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads, in which musicologist, writer and blues producer Robert Palmer, along with Dave Stewart from the band Eurythmics, interview and play with blues musicians from Memphis, Tennessee and the North Hill Country area of Mississippi.
Indie Rights, Inc. is an American distributor of independent films, based in Los Angeles, California. Indie Rights is a subsidiary of Nelson Madison Films and was incorporated in 2007 to act as distributor for other independent filmmakers. The corporation began as a private MySpace group where the makers of independent films could get information about the changing face of film distribution; founders Linda Nelson and Michael Madison created Indie Rights so that distribution contracts could be signed by a legal entity. The corporation distributes films largely through video on demand services, though more recently it has overseen such theatrical releases as We Are Kings and Fray, both in 2014.
Rocks The Blues is the first album credited to musician Ike Turner. Released in 1963 from Crown Records, it contains mostly previously released singles from the 1950s.
Jonathon "Boogie" Long is an American blues rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. His debut album was Jonathon "Boogie" Long & the Blues Revolution (2013), and Long has since issued another six collections. He has shared the stage with B.B. King, ZZ Top, Robert Cray, Joe Bonamassa, Dr. John, Govt Mule, Robert Randolph, Dr. John, Rockin' Dopsie, Monte Montgomery, Ellis Hall, Kenny Neal, Larry Garner, Henry Gray, Lil Ray Neal, and Lou Marini. Long also co-starred in the independent fictional film, We Are Kings.
