'Blues' Bands // p 3 of 5

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. His mainstream career lasted only four years, but he is widely regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in history and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".

Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division, but he was discharged the following year. He moved to Clarksville, Tennessee soon after and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within months, Hendrix earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and his third and final studio album Electric Ladyland reached number one in the US in 1968; it was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his only number-one album. He was the world's highest-paid performer, and he headlined the Woodstock festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. He died from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at age 27.

Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone writes: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."

In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted Hendrix the Pop Musician of the Year, and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year in 1968. Disc and Music Echo magazine honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969, and Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year in 1970. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and ranked Hendrix the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.

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John Fahey

John Aloysius Fahey (/ˈfeɪhi/ FAY-hee; February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitive Guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work.

Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde. He also created a series of abstract paintings in his final years. Fahey died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.

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John Lee Hooker

Known to music fans around the world as the “King of the Boogie,” John Lee Hooker endures as one of the true superstars of the blues genre: the ultimate beholder of cool. His work is widely recognized for its impact on modern music – his simple, yet deeply effective songs transcend borders and languages around the globe. Each decade of Hooker’s long career brought a new generation of fans and fresh opportunities for the ever-evolving artist. He never slowed down either: As John Lee Hooker entered his 70s, he suddenly found himself in the most successful era of his career – reinvented yet again, and energized as ever, touring and recording up until his passing in 2001.

Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi on August 22, 1917 to a sharecropping family, John Lee Hooker‘s earliest musical influence came from his stepfather, William Moore ̶— a blues musician who taught his young stepson to play the guitar, and whom John Lee later credited for his unique style on the instrument.

By the early 1940s, Hooker had moved north to Detroit by way of Memphis and Cincinnati. By day, he was a janitor in the auto factories, but by night, like many other transplants from the rural Delta, he entertained friends and neighbors by playing at house parties. “The Hook” gained fans around town from these shows, including local record store owner Elmer Barbee. Barbee was so impressed by the young musician that he introduced him to Bernard Besman ̶ a producer, record distributor and owner of Sensation Records. By 1948, Hooker ̶ now honing his style on an electric guitar ̶ had recorded several songs for Besman, who, in turn, leased the tracks to Modern Records. Among these first recordings was “Boogie Chillun,” (soon after appearing as “Boogie Chillen”) which became a number one jukebox hit, selling over a million copies. This success was soon followed by a string of hits, including “I’m in the Mood,” “Crawling Kingsnake” and “Hobo Blues.” Over the next 15 years, John Lee signed to a new label, Vee-Jay Records, and maintained a prolific recording schedule, releasing over 100 songs on the imprint.

^{Source johnleehooker.com}

Justin Townes Earle

Justin Townes Earle (born January 4, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is a son of alternative country artist Steve Earle and is named after Townes Van Zandt.

Early life
Earle grew up in South Nashville, Tennessee, with his mother, Carol Ann Hunter Earle. His father, Steve Earle, gave him his middle name in honor of his own mentor, singer and songwriter Townes van Zandt. At the age of two he was left by his father with his mother, but returned to live with his father after Steve got clean in 1994. He dropped out of school, occasionally touring with and working for his father, eventually moving to eastern Tennessee with other songwriters. Like his father, Earle battled addiction beginning in his early teens.

Career
Earle played in two Nashville bands: the Distributors, a rock band, and a ragtime and bluegrass combo the Swindlers. Earle spent some time as guitarist and keyboardist for his father's touring band the Dukes.

Earle developed a hybrid style of music mixing folk, blues and country. In 2007, he released a six-song EP called Yuma. He then signed a contract with Chicago's Bloodshot Records and he released an album called The Good Life in 2008.

In 2009 Earle co-billed The Big Surprise Tour with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Old Crow Medicine Show and The Felice Brothers and released the album Midnight at the Movies. In September 2009, Earle received an Americana Music Award for New and Emerging Artist of the Year.

In 2010 he released the album Harlem River Blues, followed by the album Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now in 2012. He also appeared in an episode of the HBO television series Treme with his father.

In 2011 Earle received the Americana Music Award in the Song of the Year category for "Harlem River Blues". His album of the same name has been described as having a "gently flowing, urban Americana sound, with horns, organ and tangy electric guitar". That year he also contributed a cover of Maybe Baby on the 2011 tribute album Rave on Buddy Holly. and played Newport Folk Festival and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now was listed at album number 37 on Rolling Stone's list of the top 50 albums of 2012, with the annotation as follows: "The son of country-rock renegade Steve Earle has grown into a songwriter to rival his dad."

Earle produced Wanda Jackson's album Unfinished Business in 2012.

Earle played the Grand Ole Opry in 2008, Historical WSM, South By Southwest (2008–2010, 2012), the historic Beacon Theater (May 2009), Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion (September 2009), Bonnaroo (2009) Bumbershoot (2010), the East Coast Blues & Roots Music Festival (Byron Bay, Australia), 2012, the Bowery Ballroom (March 2010) the Winnipeg Folk Festival (July 2008), and the Nelsonville Music Festival (2008 and 2011).

In 2018, Earle opened up for California rock band Social Distortion.

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Koko Taylor

Koko Taylor (born Cora Anna Walton, September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009) was an American singer whose style encompassed Chicago blues, electric blues, rhythm and blues and soul blues. Sometimes called "The Queen of the Blues", she was known for her rough, powerful vocals.

Life and career
Born on a farm near Memphis, Tennessee, Taylor was the daughter of a sharecropper. She left Tennessee for Chicago in 1952 with her husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor, a truck driver. In the late 1950s, she began singing in blues clubs in Chicago. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to more opportunities for performing and her first recordings. In 1963 she had a single on USA Records, and in 1964 a cut on a Chicago blues collection on Spivey Records, called Chicago Blues. In 1964 Dixon brought Taylor to Checker Records, a subsidiary label of Chess Records, for which she recorded "Wang Dang Doodle", a song written by Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf five years earlier. The record became a hit, reaching number four on the R&B chart and number 58 on the pop chart in 1966, and selling a million copies. She recorded several versions of the song over the years, including a live rendition at the 1967 American Folk Blues Festival, with the harmonica player Little Walter and the guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Her subsequent recordings, both original songs and covers, did not achieve as much success on the charts.

"Taylor sounds like you always wanted those women with Big in front of their names to sound—powerful, even rough, without ever altogether abandoning her rather feminine register."
— Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)

Taylor became better known by touring in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and she became accessible to a wider record-buying public when she signed a recording contract with Alligator Records in 1975. She recorded nine albums for Alligator, eight of which were nominated for Grammy awards, and came to dominate ranks of female blues singers, winning twenty-nine W. C. Handy/Blues Music Awards.

She survived a near-fatal car crash in 1989. In the 1990s, she appeared in the films Blues Brothers 2000 and Wild at Heart. She opened a blues club on Division Street in Chicago in 1994, which relocated to Wabash Avenue, in Chicago's South Loop, in 2000 (the club is now closed).

In 2003, she appeared as a guest with Taj Mahal in an episode of the television series Arthur. In 2009, she performed with Umphrey's McGee at the band's New Year's Eve concert at the Auditorium Theater, in Chicago.

Taylor influenced Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, Janis Joplin, Shannon Curfman, and Susan Tedeschi.

In her later years, she performed over 70 concerts a year and resided just south of Chicago, in Country Club Hills, Illinois.

In 2008, the Internal Revenue Service said that Taylor owed $400,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest, for the years 1998, 2000 and 2001. In those years combined, her adjusted gross income was $949,000.

Taylor's final performance was at the Blues Music Awards, on May 7, 2009. She suffered complications from surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding on May 19 and died on June 3.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Koko Taylor among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

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Lakota John

Lakota John is an old soul with a love for the blues. “Pembroke’s Lakota John Locklear is a prodigious blues guitarist of Lumbee and Lakota lineage–Indy Week”. From Robeson County, North Carolina and born in 1997, John Lakota Locklear is no stranger to music. He grew up listening to his dad’s music library and at 6 years old, he picked up one of his Dad’s old harmonicas and at age 7, his first guitar. This lefty learned to play guitar in standard tuning and was intrigued by the sound of the slide guitar. At age 10, he bought himself a glass slide, placed it on his pinky finger and he has been sliding over the frets ever since. Lakota John started performing in 2009 and has repeated performances at the NC Museum of History; The PineCone Music Series; Shakori Hills Music Festival; IAIA Music Festival; the North Carolina Indian Heritage Celebration; New Mexico State Fair, and many more.

He is a 2015 NAMA Nominee (Native American Music Awards) and has opened up for and shared the stage with Native American Blues Artist, Pura Fe; Blues icon, Taj Mahal; Native blues rocker, Keith Secola; Scott Ainslie, Blues Historian and Musician; Cary Morin, Native American Blues Guitarist and mentor; the Jeff Sipe Trio; Legendary Bluesman Mr. John Dee Holeman and the South Carolina “Blues Doctor” Mr. Drink Small. Lakota John continues to learn alongside the elder bluesmasters, carrying on the traditional sounds of the acoustic Piedmont to the electric blues guitar styles and preserving his heritage with songs from the Native American flute. Some of his musical influences include Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Robert Johnson, Taj Mahal, Jimi Hendrix, Derek Trucks, Jesse Fuller and many-many more.

Lakota John received two scholarships, 2008 and 2009 to attend Centrum’s Acoustic Blues Festival in Port Townsend, WA, where he participated in a week of guitar workshops and jam sessions with the late John Cephas, Phil Wiggins, Terry “Harmonica” Bean, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and many more. In 2009, he released his first CD “Old Bluez That’s Newz to Me” and shortly after, Music Maker Relief Foundation began working with the guitar prodigy, Lakota John, as one of their “Next Generation Artists”. Humble thanks to Pura Fe, blues musician and mentor, for the introduction to the Music Maker record label.

^{Source lakotajohn.com}

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. Along with Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, the band's heavy, guitar-driven sound has led them to be cited as one of the progenitors of heavy metal. Their style drew from a wide variety of influences, including blues, psychedelia, and folk music.

After changing their name from the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that afforded them considerable artistic freedom. Although the group were initially unpopular with critics, they achieved significant commercial success with eight studio albums released over eleven years, from Led Zeppelin (1969) to In Through the Out Door (1979). Their untitled fourth studio album, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV (1971) and featuring the song "Stairway to Heaven", is among the most popular and influential works in rock music, and it helped to secure the group's popularity.

Page wrote most of Led Zeppelin's music, particularly early in their career, while Plant generally supplied the lyrics. Jones' keyboard-based compositions later became central to the group's catalogue, which featured increasing experimentation. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess and debauchery. Although they remained commercially and critically successful, their output and touring schedule were limited during the late 1970s, and the group disbanded following Bonham's death from alcohol-related asphyxia in 1980. In the decades that followed, the surviving members sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off Led Zeppelin reunions. The most successful of these was the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, with Jason Bonham taking his late father's place behind the drums.

Many critics consider Led Zeppelin to be one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. They are one of the best-selling music artists in the history of audio recording; various sources estimate the group's record sales at 200 to 300 million units worldwide. With RIAA-certified sales of 111.5 million units, they are the third-best-selling band in the US. Each of their nine studio albums placed in the top 10 of the Billboard album chart and six reached the number-one spot. They achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums. Rolling Stone magazine described them as "the heaviest band of all time", "the biggest band of the Seventies", and "unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history". They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995; the museum's biography of the band states that they were "as influential" during the 1970s as the Beatles were during the 1960s.

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Little Hurricane

Little Hurricane is an American rock and blues band, based out of San Diego, California, United States. Formed in 2010, the band consists of front man Anthony "Tone" Catalano and drummer Celeste "C.C." Spina. They are a male/female duo with minimalist blues approach to a rocking, indie sound. It is a perfect blueprint for the Little Hurricane's sound. Influences include Van Morrison, Dead Weather, Gorillaz, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and The Beatles.

In 2010, Chicago-born Spina (a cook and bartender) got back on drums after eight years away from a set and put an advertisement on the website Craigslist looking for like-minded musicians. Guitarist Anthony “Tone” Catalano (former studio engineer) caught her attention when he mentioned his jazz-band days in high school. “I’ve been writing songs for years, looking for drummers,” says Tone (who relocated from Santa Cruz to San Diego). “I think it’s unique to have a girl drummer.” says Tone, who makes custom guitar slides from wine- and whiskey-bottle necks.

Formed in early 2010, Little Hurricane began when front man Tone, and drummer CC met via Craigslist and have been creating blues[citation needed] together since. Little Hurricane’s bluesy soul stems from Santa Cruz, where Tone was educated by his musical surroundings, and Chicago, where CC first created her back breaking beats” (Boikdaddy, 2011). “By coincidence, both members lived on the 30th Street in North Park, San Diego. They also found a common interest in unique and vintage equipment and a love of blues. Little Hurricane released their debut album Homewrecker, in April 2011.

The band has toured in direct support for multiple North American tours for the English ska band The Specials, as well as supported Manchester Orchestra, White Denim, and The Heartless Bastards.

In 2013 Little Hurricane toured as direct support for The John Butler Trio, who are an Australian roots and jam band led by guitarist and vocalist John Butler.

In 2016, the band signed their first record deal with Mascot Records. Their fourth studio album and first on Mascot, Same Sun Same Moon, was released on April 14, 2017, and became their second album to appear on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums Chart.

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Lucinda Williams

Three-time Grammy Award winner, Lucinda Williams has been carving her own path for more than three decades now. Born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Williams had been imbued with a “culturally rich, economically poor” worldview. Several years of playing the hardscrabble clubs gave her a solid enough footing to record a self-titled album that would become a touchstone for the embryonic Americana movement – helping launch a thousand musical ships along the way.

While not a huge commercial success at the time Lucinda Williams (aka, the Rough Trade album) retained a cult reputation, and finally got the reception it deserved upon its reissue in 2014. Jim Farber of New York’s Daily News hailed the reissue by saying “Listening again proves it to be that rarest of beasts: a perfect work. There’s not a chord, lyric, beat or inflection that doesn’t pull at the heart or make it soar.”

For much of the next decade, Williams moved around the country, stopping in Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, and turning out work that won immense respect within the industry (winning a Grammy for Mary Chapin Carpenter’s version of “Passionate Kisses”) and a gradually growing cult audience. While her recorded output was sparse for a time, the work that emerged was invariably hailed for its indelible impressionism — like 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which notched her first Grammy as a performer.

The past decade brought further development, both musically and personally, evidenced on albums like West (2007), which All Music Guide called “flawless…destined to become a classic” and Blessed (2011), which the Los Angeles Times dubbed “a dynamic, human, album, one that’s easy to fall in love with.” Those albums retained much of Williams’ trademark melancholy and southern Gothic starkness, but also exuded more rays of light and hope. This all lead to the 2014 release of Williams’ first double studio album Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone. The album received overwhelming praise from the media and fans, thus proving that Williams’ songwriting is as strong and important as it has ever been.

^{Source lucindawilliams.com}

Many Miles

The story of Many Miles began in two places; the towering red rock cliffs of Zion National Park and the mystical lakes and forests surrounding Stockholm, Sweden. In 2007 word of American Singer/Songwriter Dave Tate’s etherial solo album, “The Solitude of Here” was beginning to spread throughout Europe. With high praise from several prominent music magazines, Dave’s music soon gained the attention of Swedish Singer/Songwriter Victoria Lagerström. She fell in love with Dave’s music and reached out to him to collaborate.

Captivated by Victoria’s soulful voice and songwriting, Dave was on board. Victoria booked a ticket to Utah to write and record their first album. Over the course of a couple weeks as Dave and Victoria wrote the acoustic ballads that would eventually be “The Same Heart”, the two fell fast in love. They were married three weeks after meeting on a sagebrush hill in Dave’s native home of Zion National Park. Victoria never used her return ticket to Sweden.

^{Source manymilesband.com}

Mark Lanegan

Mark William Lanegan (born November 25, 1964) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He released more than 10 studio albums and was the lead singer for Screaming Trees. He was also a member of Queens of the Stone Age. Lanegan is known for his baritone voice, which has been described as being "as scratchy as a three-day beard yet as supple and pliable as moccasin leather."

Lanegan began his musical career in 1984 as the frontman of the psychedelic grunge band Screaming Trees, with whom he released seven studio albums and five EPs before they split up in 2000. During his time in the band, he also started a solo career and released his first solo studio album, The Winding Sheet, in 1990. He has since released a further 10 solo albums, and has received critical recognition but only moderate commercial success. Following the end of Screaming Trees, he became a frequent collaborator of Queens of the Stone Age and featured on their albums Rated R, Songs for the Deaf, Lullabies to Paralyze, Era Vulgaris, and ...Like Clockwork.

Lanegan has also collaborated with various artists throughout his career, including Kurt Cobain, with whom he recorded an unreleased album of Lead Belly covers. He also performed with Layne Staley and Mike McCready in the band Mad Season. He also formed The Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli in 2003, released three collaboration albums with singer Isobel Campbell, and has contributed to releases by Melissa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Tinariwen, The Twilight Singers, and Unkle, among others.

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Michael Chapman

Michael Chapman (24 January 1941 – 10 September 2021) was an English singer-songwriter, and virtuosic guitar player. Chapman originally began playing guitar with jazz bands, mainly in his home town of Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He became well known in the folk clubs of the late 1960s, as well as on the 'progressive' music scene, and released over 50 albums.

In 2016, Chapman celebrated fifty years as a professional musician. Towards the end of his life he still played professionally and regularly toured in the UK, Europe and US.

Biography

Chapman was born in Hunslet, Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He attended art college in Leeds and then worked as an art and photography teacher at Bolton College, Lancashire. At the time he was playing mostly jazz guitar standards as he was heavily influenced by American jazz performers. Listening to other English guitar players such as Ralph McTell, Chapman evolved his own distinctive style of playing incorporating jazz, folk & ragtime stylings.

He first appeared on the London and Cornwall folk music circuits in 1967, including the Piper's Folk Club in Penzance, alongside John Martyn and Roy Harper. His first album was Rainmaker in 1969. The producer was Gus Dudgeon who also produced records by Elton John, David Bowie, Steeleye Span and many others. Rainmaker was released on the EMI progressive label Harvest, and Chapman played the folk and progressive circuits during the festivals of the early 1970s, with Mick Ronson, Rick Kemp and Keef Hartley.

While living in Kingston upon Hull, Chapman recorded a further three albums for Harvest. Fully Qualified Survivor, again produced by Gus Dudgeon with lush strings arranged by Paul Buckmaster, received much critical acclaim from the likes of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, and contained his best-known track, "Postcards of Scarborough". Window and Wrecked Again followed, the latter being Chapman's attempt at a Memphis album. Brass arrangements featured on biographical tracks like "Shuffleboat River Farewell" and the title track. After a tour of the United States with Rick Kemp, Chapman signed to Decca's subsidiary, Deram, recording an increasingly rockier set of albums. Championed by Charles Shaar Murray and John Peel, he retained a high profile, a lively draw on the college circuit in the UK and across mainland Europe.

The record producer Don Nix worked on the album Savage Amusement, which included several songs from the past. Chapman and Kemp used the album's title for a band in the mid 1980s. 1977 saw the end of Chapman's Decca deal, and the beginning of an association with Criminal Records in 1978 and the two labels produced versions of The Man Who Hated Mornings. Chapman released a record of guitar instruction, and continued giving concerts and recording in a variety of styles and with varying formations.

Chapman then started a period of prolific recording activity, recording for numerous smaller record labels, and playing the folk and club circuits. The 1980s was a quieter time for Chapman. He continued to make recordings that straddled musical genres and pushed his guitar playing to the fore, but had neither the profile nor sales of the previous decade.

Chapman performing on 21 March 1980 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia)
The late 1990s onwards represented a period of continued rebirth for Chapman. He embraced the "elder statesman" role and enjoyed critical acclaim for albums like Navigation, Dreaming Out Loud and Still Making Rain (a wry pun title that looked back to his debut album). Chapman released albums about every two years, receiving praise but without great sales, ending with the 1997 release Dreaming Out Loud. Bands like Supergrass acknowledged Chapman's material and playing as a formative influence.

The new century saw Chapman exploring his guitar player roots and releasing instrumental albums alongside his song-based sets. Americana and Words Fail Me feature soundscapes that recalled travels in America, and featured a dexterity and inventiveness on the guitar equal to the classic Harvest and Decca periods.

In February 2008, he hosted a charity dinner/auction where a limited edition Vanity and Pride was released featuring Ursa who added her own contribution to Chapman's music.

A tribute album titled Oh Michael, Look What You've Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman was released in 2012 on Tompkins Square Records. It includes contributions from Lucinda Williams, Maddy Prior, William Tyler, Hiss Golden Messenger and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

Chapman's back catalogue for Harvest has been re-released by US based label Light in the Attic in both heavyweight vinyl and CD formats. He also recorded several instrumental albums for Tompkins Square Records, including Fish in 2015.

His website stated: "I had an art college education and on a rainy night in 1966 I went into a pub in Cornwall, but I couldn't afford to pay to go in. So I said, I'll tell you what, I don't want to stay outside in the rain, I'll play guitar for half an hour for you. They offered me a job for the rest of the summer and I've been at it ever since."

Chapman died on 10 September 2021, at the age of 80.

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Nathaniel Rateliff

Nathaniel David Rateliff (born October 7, 1978) is an American singer and songwriter based in Denver, whose influences are described as folk, Americana and vintage rhythm & blues. Rateliff has garnered attention with Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, the soulful R&B combo he formed in 2013. He has also released two solo albums and one album under the name Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel.

Rateliff was born in St. Louis, MO on October 7, 1978. He grew up in rural Missouri, learning to play the drums at age seven and joining his family's Gospel Band. When Rateliff was 13, his father was killed in a car crash. As a result he taught himself guitar and began writing his own songs. At eighteen, Rateliff moved to Denver for missionary work. After his internal struggles with life in the Church, he left the group and moved home back to Hermann for work in a plastic factory. A few months later he returned to Denver and started work first as a carpenter, then at a trucking depot where he remained (at first in the yard, and then on the dock) for 10 years before becoming a gardener.

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Nina Simone

She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone.

When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark.

By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller.

No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did.

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default.

^{Source NinaSimone.com}

Paolo Nutini

Paolo Giovanni Nutini (born 9 January 1987) is a Scottish singer, songwriter and musician from Paisley. Nutini's debut album, These Streets (2006), peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart. Its follow-up, Sunny Side Up (2009), debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. Both albums have been certified quintuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry.

After 5 years, Nutini released his third studio album, Caustic Love, in April 2014. The album received positive reviews from music critics. Caustic Love debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts and was certified platinum by the BPI in June 2014.

In late July 2014, he was referred to by the BBC as "arguably Scotland's biggest musician right now".

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