Blues Rock | Musicosity

Blues Rock

Steve Hill

Steve Hill got an early start as a professional guitar player at the age of 16. By the time he was 20 he was already doing more than 200 gigs a year, which lead to the success of his first album in 1997. The album was voted Best Canadian Debut Recording by Vancouver’s Real Blues magazine. Following a tour that took him across Canada, France and Belgium, he returned to the studio in 1999 to record ‘’Call It What You Will’’.

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Slow Chase

Produced by Jonathan Burnside (Grinspoon, Faith No More, Eskimo Joe, The Sleepy Jackson, The Grates, The Living End, Dan Sultan, Dallas Crane), Slow Chase released their debut three track record The Blind Spot EP in 2012. They formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2010 after a chance meeting between singer Adam Gresty and drummer Emily Shaw at an Elvis tribute night.

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Jasper

There is more than one artist with this name: 1) Hands Up/Dancecore project from Germany, produced by Marco Juliano, Stefan Rio and Ti-Mo. 2) There is a male singer-songwriter from New York who released three solo albums under the name Jasper from 2001 to 2004. "Jasper Makes Music" was released in 2001, "Thinking Back" was released in 2002, and The Distance Between was released in 2004. In 2005, he begun performing under his given name, Matt Jasper, and has since released As A Matter of Fact in 2007 and Bored Games in March of 2010, both under the name Matt Jasper.

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Gary Clark Jr.

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, actor, GARY CLARK JR. (1984.02.15/Austin, TX - ) began playing guitar at the ripe young age of 12. Born and raised in Austin, TX, Gary continued to play small gigs throughout his early teens, until he popped on the radar of legendary promoter Clifford Antone, owner of the Austin blues club Antone's. Through Clifford's connections, Gary soon began sitting in and learning from an array of musical icons, including the incomparable Jimmie Vaughan.

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[citation needed], 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. When he was a teenager, Memphis experienced the period when rockabilly, western swing, electric blues, and some forms of African American music were combining to give birth to rock and roll. The period featured legendary figures such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, as well as minor legends such as Gus Cannon, Furry Lewis, Will Shade, Royal Bell, Memphis Willie B., Johnny Burnette, Red Roby, Abe McNeal, and Slim Rhodes. Musselwhite supported himself by digging ditches, laying concrete and running moonshine in a 1950 Lincoln. This environment was Musselwhite's school for music as well as life, and he acquired the nickname "Memphis Charlie."[citation needed]
In true bluesman fashion, Musselwhite then took off in search of the rumored "big-paying factory jobs" up the "Hillbilly Highway", legendary Highway 61 to Chicago, where he continued his education on the South Side, making the acquaintance of even more legends including Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Big Walter Horton. Musselwhite immersed himself completely in the musical life, living in the basement of, and occasionally working at Jazz Record Mart (the record store operated by Delmark Records founder Bob Koester) with Big Joe Williams and working as a driver for an exterminator, which allowed him to observe what was happening around the city's clubs and bars. He spent his time hanging out at the Jazz Record Mart at the corner of State and Grand and the nearby bar, Mr. Joe's, with the city's blues musicians, and sitting in with Big Joe Williams and others in the clubs, playing for tips. There he forged a lifelong friendship with John Lee Hooker; though Hooker lived in Detroit, Michigan, the two often visiting each other, and Hooker serving as best man at Musselwhite's wedding. Gradually Musselwhite became well known around town.

In time, Musselwhite led his own blues band, and, after Elektra Records' success with Paul Butterfield, he released the classic[citation needed] Stand Back! album in 1966 on Vanguard Records (as "Charley Musselwhite"), to immediate and great success. He took advantage of the clout this album gave him to move to San Francisco, where, instead of being one of many competing blues acts, he held court as the king of the blues in the exploding countercultural music scene, an exotic and gritty figure to the flower children. Musselwhite even convinced Hooker to move out to California.

Since then, Musselwhite has released over 20 albums, as well as guesting on albums by many other musicians, such as Bonnie Raitt's Longing in Their Hearts and The Blind Boys of Alabama's Spirit of the Century, both winners of Grammy awards. He also appeared on Tom Waits' Mule Variations and INXS' Suicide Blonde. He himself has won 14 W. C. Handy awards and six Grammy nominations, as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Monterey Blues Festival and the San Javier Jazz Festival in San Javier, Spain, and the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

In 1979, Musselwhite recorded The Harmonica According to Charlie Musselwhite in London for Kicking Mule Records, intended to go with an instructional book; the album itself became so popular that it has been released on CD.

Unfortunately, Musselwhite, as with many of his peers, fell victim to alcoholism; by his own admission[citation needed], he had never been on stage sober until after he stopped drinking entirely in 1987.

In 1990 Musselwhite signed with Alligator Records, a step led to a resurgence of his career.

Over the years, Musselwhite has branched out in style. His 1999 recording, Continental Drifter, is accompanied by Quarteto Patria, from Cuba's Santiago region, the Cuban music analog of the Mississippi Delta. Because of the political differences between Cuba and the United States, the album was recorded in Bergen, Norway, with Musselwhite's wife ironing out all the details.

Musselwhite believes the key to his musical success was finding a style where he could express himself. He has said, "I only know one tune, and I play it faster or slower, or I change the key, but it’s just the one tune I’ve ever played in my life. It’s all I know."[1]

His past two albums, Sanctuary and Delta Hardware have both been released on Real World Records. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Joe Louis Walker

Joe Louis Walker (born December 25, 1949 in San Francisco, California) is an American blues guitarist, singer and producer. Walker's parents were blues fans, and introduced him to the music when he was young.
He learned to play the guitar at age fourteen, and left home at sixteen to work as a performer. He soon met Mike Bloomfield, who introduced him to the Bay Area Blues scene. During the 1960s, Walker opened for such artists as Earl Hooker, Freddie King and Lowell Fulson.

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Robin Trower

Robin Trower (born March 9, 1945 in Catford, England) is a british blues rock guitarist who achieved success with Procol Harum during the 1960's, and then again as the leader of his own power trio. Perhaps Trower's most famous album is Bridge Of Sighs (1974). This album, along with his first (Twice Removed From Yesterday) and third (For Earth Below) solo albums, was produced by his former Procol Harum band mate, organist Matthew Fisher.

Ben Harper and Relentless7

An American rock band formed in 2008 by Ben Harper. The current lineup consists of Ben Harper (vocals, guitar/slide guitar), Jason Mozersky (lead guitar), Jesse Ingalls (bass and keyboards), and Jordan Richardson (drums). Harper met Jason Mozersky in the late nineties when Mozersky was working for an Austin, Texas music promoter. Mozersky was chauffering Harper to a gig, and asked if he could play a demo for his band, Wan Santo Condo. Harper resisted initially, fearing the music would interfere with his mental preparation for the show, but then felt remorseful and agreed to hear the demo.

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The Mess Hall

The Mess Hall are a two-piece rock and roll combo based in Sydney, New South Wales that formed in 2001. Widely respected for their live shows, The Mess Hall have toured Australia extensively both in their own right and supporting bands such as You Am I, Jet and The Strokes. They have also toured the US and Japan, notably with fellow Sydney band, Wolfmother. Outside the driving drums and guitar of The Mess Hall, singer/guitarist Jed Kurzel is an acoustic artist of some note. Drummer Cec Condon is a veteran of the Brisbane music scene.

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