Lurrie Bell

Lurrie Bell (born Lurrie C. Bell, December 13, 1958, Chicago, Illinois, United States) is an American blues guitarist and singer. His father was renowned blues harmonica player Carey Bell.

Career

Bell started playing guitar at the age of six, and in his teens he polished his skills playing with the legends of Chicago blues scene including Eddy Clearwater, Big Walter Horton and Eddie Taylor.

In the mid 1970s, he went on to join Koko Taylor's Blues Machine and he toured with the band for four years. He made his recording debut in 1977 appearing on his father's album Heartaches and Pain and also on Eddie C. Campbell's King of the Jungle. It was around that time that he formed The Sons of Blues with musicians including Billy Branch on harmonica. Three tracks of the band's recordings were featured in the Alligator Records compilation Living Chicago Blues Vol. 3 released in 1978. In 1989 he released his first solo effort, Everybody Wants To Win, on JSP Records.

Though Bell's career appeared to be headed in the right direction, drawing attention of the blues fans around the world as a young prodigy of the blues, he battled emotional problems and drug abuse for many years, which kept him away from performing on regular basis.

Bell

A bell is a simple idiophone percussion instrument. Although bells come in many forms, most are made of metal cast in the shape of a hollow cup, whose sides form a resonator which vibrates in a single tone upon being struck. The strike may be made by a "clapper" or "uvula" suspended within the bell, by a separate mallet or hammer, or—in small bells—by a small loose sphere enclosed within the body of the bell.

Bells are usually made by casting metal, but small bells can also be made from ceramic or glass. Bells range in size from tiny dress accessories to church bells 5 metres tall, weighing many tons. Historically, bells were associated with religious rituals, and before mass communication were widely used to call communities together for both religious and secular events. Later, bells were made to commemorate important events or people and have been associated with the concepts of peace and freedom. The study of bells is called campanology.

A set of bells, hung in a circle for change ringing, is known as a ring or peal of bells.

Buddy Guy

George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues and has influenced guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a house guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with harmonica player Junior Wells.

Guy was ranked 30th in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked 78th in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. Clapton once described him as "the best guitar player alive".

Guy's autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, was published in 2012.

Early life

Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana, United States. Guy began learning guitar on a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar, which, decades later in Guy's lengthy career was donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Buddy Guy's Legends

Buddy Guy's Legends is a blues club in Chicago, Illinois. It was opened in 1989 by blues legend Buddy Guy who still owns the club today and who still makes regular appearances, performing an annual residency each January.

Legends is one of the last blues clubs left in Chicago, a city renowned for its own particular brand of blues. The club regularly hosts blues greats such as Stevie Ray Vaughan (Now dead), Eric Clapton, Junior Wells and Buddy himself, and has developed an international reputation. In 2013 it became one of the only blues clubs to offer livestreaming concerts.

References

Sources

Chicago blues

The Chicago blues is a form of blues music indigenous to Chicago, Illinois. Chicago blues is a type of urban blues. Urban blues evolved from classic blues as a result of the great depression and developed in the first half of the twentieth century during the Great Migration, when Black workers moved from the Southern United States into the industrial cities of the Northern United States such as Chicago. Chicago blues is based around the sound of the electric guitar and the harmonica, with the harmonica played through a PA system or guitar amplifier.

Urban blues started in Chicago and St. Louis, as music created by part-time musicians playing as street musicians, at rent parties, and other events within the black community. For example, bottleneck guitarist Kokomo Arnold was a steelworker and had a moonshine business that was far more profitable than his music.

One of the most important early incubators for Chicago blues was the open air market on Maxwell street. The Maxwell street market was one of the largest open air markets in the nation. Residents of the black community would frequent it to buy and sell just about anything. It was a natural location for blues musicians to perform. The standard path for blues musicians was to start out as street musicians and at house parties and to eventually make their way to blues clubs. The first blues clubs in Chicago were mostly in predominantly black neighborhoods on the South Side with a few in the smaller black neighborhoods on the West Side. One of the most famous was Ruby Lee Gatewood's Tavern, known by patrons as "The Gates". During the 1930s virtually every big name artist played there.