Billy Branch

Billy Branch (born William Earl Branch, October 3, 1951, Great Lakes, Illinois, United States) is an American blues harmonica player and singer of Chicago blues and harmonica blues.

Career

Billy Branch is a three-time Grammy nominee, a retired two-term governor for the Chicago Grammy Chapter, an Emmy Award winner, and a winner of the Addy Award. In addition, Branch has received numerous humanitarian and music awards.

Branch was born in Great Lakes, Chicago, Illinois, although his family moved to Los Angeles when he was five years old. In 1969 he moved to Chicago where he attended and graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Branch attended the first Chicago Blues Fest, produced by Willie Dixon, in 1969. Six years later, after graduating from the University of Illinois, he was touring with the band led by Willie Dixon called the Chicago Blues All-Stars. He soon took the place of the harmonica player Carey Bell, when Carey left the All Stars to form his own band.

In the 1970s, Branch founded his own group, The Sons of Blues, along with Lurrie Bell on guitar and Freddie Dixon on bass guitar. They are the sons of Carey Bell and Willie Dixon respectively, and they recorded for Alligator Records and with a change in personnel for Red Beans Records. The new band consisted of Carlos Johnson on guitar and J. W. Williams on vocals and bass guitar. He has also recorded for Verve Records and Evidence Records.

Branch

A branch (UK /ˈbrɑːntʃ/ or UK /ˈbræntʃ/, US /ˈbræntʃ/) or tree branch (sometimes referred to in botany as a ramus) is a woody structural member connected to but not part of the central trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs.

While branches can be nearly horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, the majority of trees have upwardly diagonal branches.

The term "twig" often refers to a terminus, while "bough" refers only to branches coming directly from the trunk.

Words

Because of the enormous quantity of branches in the world, there are a variety of names in English alone for them. In general however, unspecific words for a branch (such as rise and rame) have been replaced by the word branch itself.

Specific terms

A bough can also be called a limb or arm, and though these are arguably metaphors, both are widely accepted synonyms for bough.

A crotch or fork is an area where a trunk splits into two or more boughs.

A twig is frequently referred to as a sprig as well, especially when it has been plucked. Other words for twig include branchlet, spray, and surcle, as well as the technical terms surculus and ramulus.

Billy

Billy may refer to:

People

Places

Blues

Blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in traditional African music, combined with European American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. The blue notes (or "worried notes") which are often thirds or fifths which are flatter in pitch than in other music styles, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect called a groove.

Blues as a genre possesses other characteristics such as lyrics, bass lines, and instruments. The lyrics of early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the so-called AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating troubles experienced within African American society.

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.