modern electric blues | Musicosity

modern electric blues

Charlie Musselwhite

Musselwhite was born in the rural hill country of Mississippi. He has said that he is of Choctaw descent, and he was born in a region originally inhabited by the Choctaw. However, in a 2005 interview, he said his mother had told him he was actually Cherokee. His family considered it normal to play music, with his father playing guitar and harmonica, his mother playing piano, and a relative who was a one-man band. At the age of three, Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

Read more about Charlie Musselwhite on Last.fm.

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Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Kenny Wayne Shepherd and his group exploded on the scene in the mid-'90s and garnered huge amounts of radio airplay on commercial radio, which historically has not been a solid home for blues and blues-rock music, with the exception of Stevie Ray Vaughan in the mid-'80s. Shepherd was born June 12, 1977, in Shreveport, LA. The Shreveport native began playing at age seven, figuring out Muddy Waters licks from his father's record collection (he has never taken a formal lesson).

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Corey Harris

Corey Harris (born February 21, 1969, Denver, Colorado) is a guitarist based in New Orleans on the Alligator label. He spent some time in western Africa studying, and rhythms from this area are very prevalent in his music, most conspicuously in "Mississippi to Mali." He performs a wide variety of music, from poppy selections (Santoro, eg) to raw, traditional guitar and piano blues (Honeysuckle, eg). He is one of the few contemporary blues artists that is able to avoid being either a staunch traditionalist or totally separated from its roots.

Read more about Corey Harris on Last.fm.

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John Campbell

Guitarist, singer and songwriter John Campbell had the potential of turning a whole new generation of people onto the blues in the 1990s, much the same way Stevie Ray Vaughan did in the 1980s. His vocals were so powerful and his guitar playing so fiery, you couldn't help but stop what you were doing and pay attention to what you were hearing. But unfortunately, because of frail health and a rough European tour, he suffered a heart attack while sleeping on June 13, 1993, at the age of 41.

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Fabulous Thunderbirds

Taken from their web-pages (www.fabulousthunderbirds.com)
For the past 30 years, The Fabulous Thunderbirds have been the quintessential American band. The group's distinctive and powerful sound, influenced by a diversity of musical styles, manifested itself into a unique musical hybrid via such barnburners as "Tuff Enuff" and "Wrap It Up". Co-founder Kim Wilson, the sole original member, still spearheads the group as it evolves into its newest incarnation.

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Canned Heat

Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie band that formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts, Alan Wilson (1943 – 1970) and Bob Hite (1943 – 1981), who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 Canned Heat Blues, a song about an alcoholic who has desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat".

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Vargas Blues Band

”Javier Vargas was born in Madrid. When he was nine years old, he and his family moved to Argentina, where his parents had lived during the Spanish Civil War. They lived in Mendoza, San Luis, Buenos Aires and also in Mar del Plata, where he started playing the guitar with young musicians in places such as garages. He took guitar lessons, and he also used to go clubs to listen to groups playing blues live.

Read more about Vargas Blues Band on Last.fm.

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Keb' Mo'

Keb' Mo' (born October 3, 1951 in South Los Angeles, California as Kevin Moore) is an American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter. He first started recording in the early 1970s with Jefferson Airplane violinist Papa John Creach. Creach hired him when Moore was just twenty-one years old; Moore appeared on four of Creach's albums. He was further immersed in the blues with his long stint in the Whodunit Band, headed by Bobby "Blue" Bland producer Monk Higgins. Moore jammed with Albert Collins and Big Joe Turner.

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James Blood Ulmer

James "Blood" Ulmer (born February 2, 1942 in St. Matthews, South Carolina) is an American avant-garde and and . Ulmer's distinctive guitar sound has been described as "jagged" and "stinging." His singing has been called "raggedly soulful." Ulmer began his career playing with various ensembles, and first recorded with organist John Patton in 1969. After moving to New York in 1971, Ulmer played with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Joe Henderson, Paul Bley, Rashied Ali and Larry Young.

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