This Week In The Blues: March 16 - March 22, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of March 16 - March 22, 2025.

Some of the highlights include Founding member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds Jimmie Vaughan, The one and only Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and blues guitarist and juke joint legend Willie King.

We just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:
https://bigtrainblues.com
https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Photo credits (if known) and past episodes are posted on our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@BigTrainBlues

Here are links to a few of the artists or songs we've referenced in this week's episode:

Jimmie Vaughan - "Six Strings Down" [Live Performance] - https://youtu.be/qn91Ces2WrA?si=Q8XJeZdsueBCgugq

Willie King at Bettie's Place - https://youtu.be/3srCrVIee9c?si=u7n_rWeChVzfJggH

Join me every weekday from 12:15pm-12:45pm CT to watch a live stream on Facebook of the longest running blues radio show program. https://www.facebook.com/DeltaCulturalCenter

We’ll have a new episode next week – we’ll see you then!

ARE YOU A FAN OF BLUES HISTORY? US TOO!

 If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:

     https://bigtrainblues.com

     https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Transcript

 This Week In The Blues Mar 16 – Mar 22 2025

Blues musician James “Yank” Rachell was born on March 16 in either 1903 or 1910. Rachel has been called an "elder statesman of the blues". His career as a performer spanned nearly seventy years, from the late 1920s to the 1990s. He was the composer of several blues standards, including ''Divin' Duck Blues'' and ''She Caught the Katy.'' He was notable for his driving, rhythmic style on the mandolin and the cropped, guitarlike phrases he achieved on it.

Country blues guitarist Abraham John Bond Jr., better known as Son Bonds was born March 16, 1909. Bonds was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. He was also billed on records as "Brownsville" Son Bonds and Brother Son Bonds. He worked and played with the likes of Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon. The music of Bonds's 1934 song 'Back and Side Blues' became a standard blues melody when Sonny Boy Williamson used it in his classic "Good Morning, School Girl". The best-known of Bonds's other works are "A Hard Pill to Swallow" and "Come Back Home."

Blues pianist and singer Lovie Lee was born March 17, 1909. He is best known for his work accompanying Muddy Waters. He was the "adoptive stepfather" of the bluesman Carey Bell. He was born Edward Lee Watson in Chattanooga, Tennessee, growing up in Meridian, Mississippi. He taught himself to play the piano and began performing in various churches and at rodeos and vaudeville shows. Together Lovie Lee and Carey Bell moved to Chicago in September of 1956.

Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player Big Daddy Kinsey was born on March 18, 1927 near Pleasant Grove, Mississippi. He grew up playing gospel music and his father was a pastor in the Church of God in Christ and disapproved of blues music. However, Kinsey started playing guitar at parties in Mississippi, before moving in 1944 to Gary, Indiana, where he worked in a steel mill. He married and served in the military before returning to work in Gary and raising a family. In the late 1950s, he started a family band that eventually became The Kinsey Report that featured Kinsey and four of his sons.

Blues guitarist and juke joint legend Willie King was born March 18, 1943. King was born in Prairie Point, Mississippi near the Alabama border. He worked as a sharecropper, moonshine maker and traveling salesman; just a few of his many occupations. Later he became active with the civil rights movement, which inspired him to write socially conscious blues songs. King performed at national and international festivals but mostly played near his home, most notably as a regular at Bettie's Juke joint in Mississippi, which is immortalized in one of his songs called “Betty’s Place”.

Rhythm and blues singer and pianist Clarence "Frogman" Henry born March 19, 1937 in New Orleans! He started learning piano as a child, and when he played in talent shows, dressed like Professor Longhair and wore a wig with braids on both sides. He used his trademark croak to improvise the song "Ain't Got No Home" one night in 1955, and again in September 1956. The song eventually rose to number 3 on the national R&B chart. The gimmick earned Henry his nickname of 'Frogman'.

The one and only Sister Rosetta Tharpe born March 20, 1915!  Her unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar that was extremely important to the origins of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Her guitar playing technique using heavy distortion had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s; in particular Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards.

Founding member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds Jimmie Vaughan was born March 20, 1951! As one of the leading Austin, Texas guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s, he was responsible for opening the national market up for gritty roadhouse blues and R&B. Raised in Dallas, Texas, Vaughan moved to Austin in the late 1960s and in 1969, Vaughan's group opened for The Jimi Hendrix Experience in Fort Worth, Texas. It was at this show that Vaughan lent Jimi Hendrix his Vox Wah-wah pedal which Hendrix ended up breaking. In return, Hendrix gave Vaughan his own touring Wah-wah pedal.

blues singer and pianist Marcia Ball was born on March 20, 1949 in Orange, Texas, and raised in Vinton, Louisiana. Ball has been described as "a sensation, saucy singer and superb pianist where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet." In May 2015, Ball won the 'Pinetop Perkins Piano Player' award at the Blues Music Awards ceremony. She won the same award in 2019. On October 25, 2018, Ball was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, where she first appeared during their inaugural season in 1976.

Blues drummer and vocalist Sam Lay was born March 20, 1935 in Birmingham, Alabama. He began his career in 1957, as the drummer for the Original Thunderbirds. He soon after became the drummer for the harmonica player Little Walter. In 1960, he became the regular drummer for Muddy Waters, and remained in Waters's band until 1966. In that time he also began recording and performing with prominent blues musicians, including Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Eddie Taylor, John Lee Hooker, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Magic Sam, Jimmy Rogers, and Earl Hooker.

Classic blues musician Bo Carter was MAYBE born on March 21 in 1892 or 1893. Other birth dates have included June 28 or 30, or sometime in January. So we’ll just go with today. He was born Armenter Chatmon in Bolton, Mississippi, and together with brothers Lonnie and Sam Chatmon, and friend Walter Vinson they formed the Mississippi Sheiks. The Mississippi Sheiks were the country’s most prominent African American string band in the 1930s when they recorded the classics “Sitting on Top of the World,” “Stop and Listen Blues,” and “Winter Time Blues.”

The great Son House was born March 21 1902. He was a major innovator of the Delta style, along with his playing partners Charley Patton and Willie Brown. Few listening experiences in the blues are as intense as hearing one of Son House’s original 1930s recordings for the Paramount label. Even on scratchy 78s, you can still hear the emotional fervor House puts into his singing and slide playing. Not only did he influence scores of British guitar players, he was the main source of inspiration to both Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson.

Bluesman Juke Boy Bonner who was born March 22 1932 in Bellville, Texas! He accompanied himself on guitar, harmonica, and drums in songs such as "Going Back to the Country", "Life Is a Nightmare", and "Struggle Here in Houston". At the age of twelve he taught himself to play the guitar. He gained the nickname "Juke Boy" as a youth, because he frequently sang in local juke joints. Starting a musical career as teenager, he won the first prize at local talent show at the Lincoln Theater in Houston, Texas in 1948. Between 1954 and 1960, he recorded several singles but not all were released at the time.

Well blues fans, we just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to follow our social media pages or visit our website at Big Train Blues.com. 

We’ll have a new episode next week that will include stories about Austin, Texas blues guitarist and singer Sue Foley and the ORIGINAL "Sonny Boy Williamson". It’s going to be a great show - we’ll see you then!