Texas Blues Radio

I blame it all on Jimmy Reed. If it wasn’t for his music, my introduction to the blues may have been delayed for quite some time. As a teenager, when I heard “The Best of Jimmy Reed” on Vee Jay Records, everything changed for me.

I decided that I needed to know everything there was to know about this kind of music. Some forty years later, I’m still pursuing everything blues and I probably will be until my last days. In the course of my pursuit of the blues, I have been very fortunate to have seen Jimmy Reed perform live along with many other of the “Masters” like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Hound Dog Taylor, Otis Rush, Junior Wells and many others.

I was able to see all these bluesmen in around Chicago in the late 60s where I worked in the steel mills during the summer to pay my way through college.

I listen to all styles of blues, but if I had to choose one to be more partial to, it would probably be the Post-War electric blues of the late 40s and 50s. To me, these guys were true innovators. They were using electric guitars and amplifiers for the first with no one before them to use as examples. They were it. And blues is still played pretty much the same way the pioneers of the 50s played it.

I started playing guitar back in the early 70’s and eventually switched to bass and never looked back. I’ve played in all different kinds of bands ranging from jazz, jazz fusion, funk, power trio rock but I always seemed to go back to the Blues.

I’ve played in numerous bands up in the Chicago and Champaign, Illinois area as well as several Blues bands in the North Texas area. And although I was born in Chicago, I consider my self a naturalized Texan since I grew up here but spent some time up north. From being born in Chicago and growing up in Texas, how can I not have strong feelings for the Blues ?