This Week In The Blues: August 17 - August 23, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of August 17 - August 23, 2025.

Some of the highlights include blues singer-songwriter and guitar player Luther Allison, the King of the Boogie John Lee Hooker, Piedmont blues guitar player and singer Carolina Slim.

Keep in mind that there's so much more that happened this week in the blues. 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:

Luther Allison - "It Hurts Me Too" (Montreal International Jazz Festival, 1997) - https://youtu.be/5MqYPyRkcNs?si=mJ9LNLY5JN2z857G

John Lee Hooker - "Boom Boom" - https://youtu.be/72p9TTkoymY?si=KGLD7uJAt4mmvVYn

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

Blues singer-songwriter and guitar player Luther Allison was born August 17, 1939 in Widener, Arkansas, although some accounts suggest his actual place of birth was Mayflower, Arkansas. Allison was interested in music as a child and during the late 1940s toured in a family gospel group called The Southern Travellers. He moved with his family to Chicago in 1951 and was high school classmates with Muddy Waters' son. He taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he dropped out of school and began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform.

Sister Ola Mae Terrell was born on August 18 1911. When she was 11 while attending a tent revival she experienced a salvation experience. She taught herself to play the guitar and began writing gospel songs and singing them on Atlanta’s vice-ridden Decatur Street from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 1953 she recorded five tracks for Columbia.  They were miscategorized and didn’t sell, and her contract was cancelled. Though she seemed to have disappeared from the world at large, her music stayed around. One song was used in an off-Broadway play. Sister Terrell had checks waiting and the music publisher couldn't find her. She was finally found in a nursing home in Conyers, Georgia, where the money provided some material comfort those last years.

Blues singer and songwriter Barkin' Bill Smith was born on August 18, 1928. Barkin' Bill is a jewel of pure Chicago blues. Stylistically, he was close to the great Joe Williams, whose warm, reassuring vocals have always been 'like a friend' as well to singers like Percy Mayfield, Jimmy Witherspoon, Big Joe Turner, Wynonie Harris, Brook Benton, and other crooners and shouters of the '40s and '50s. And while he borrowed liberally from others' songbooks, he was himself entirely an original for nearly 50 years. He was given his stage name from Homesick James in 1958, after the pair had worked together.

Soul blues singer Earl Gaines, Jr. was born August 19, 1935 in Decatur, Alabama. Gaines moved to Nashville, Tennessee as a teenager and found employment as both a singer and occasional drummer. Gains met Louis Brooks, who had a recording contract with the Excello label. Their joint recording, "It's Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)," peaked at No. 2 on the US Billboard R&B chart in 1955. It was Gaines' biggest hit, but his name was not credited on the record. Gaines became part of the 1955 R&B Caravan of Stars, with Bo Diddley, Big Joe Turner, and Etta James. Their tour culminated with an appearance at New York's Carnegie Hall. In the following decades he performed live and recorded with limited charting success. In 1975, Gaines left the music industry for almost a decade and a half, to work as a truck driver. He finally re-emerged in 1989 with the album House Party.

Blues drummer Uncle John Turner was born on August 20 in 1944 in Port Arthur Texas. He played with Johnny and Edgar Winter, eventually convincing Johnny to ditch R&B covers and start a full-on blues band, also featuring bassist Tommy Shannon. He played around the state, and after returning to Austin, Turner’s role as one of the house drummers at Antone’s and the Armadillo World Headquarters enabled him to sit in with Junior Wells, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Lightnin’ Hopkins and BB King. Earlier in his career, he even jammed with Jimi Hendrix.

Southern soul singer Sir Lattimore Brown was born August 20, 1931.  He was a regular on the Chitlin' Circuit from the early 1960s and performed with Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Etta James, Jackie Wilson and Muddy Waters, but later faded into obscurity with several publications believing he had died in the 1980s. In his obituary, the Daily Telegraph labelled Brown 'soul music's unluckiest man', due to the many personal tragedies he experienced though his life.

Delta blues fiddler Henry "Son" Sims was born August 22, 1890. He was born in Anguilla, Mississippi, and learned to play the fiddle from his grandfather. After serving in France during World War I. He joined his childhood friend Charley Patton in a recording session in June 1929 Grafton, Wisconsin. Sims returned to working on a plantation until August 28, 1941, when he accompanied Muddy Waters in a recording session under the direction of Alan Lomax. Sims also accompanied Robert Nighthawk on several occasions. He continued a solo career into the 1950s.

The King of the Boogie John Lee Hooker was born August 22, 1917. He was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. He rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stone's 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists.

Piedmont blues guitar player and singer Carolina Slim was born on August 22, 1923 in Leasburg, North Carolina. His real name is Edward Harris. He learned to play the guitar from his father and later found work as an itinerant musician around Durham, North Carolina. Carolina Slim’s best-known records are "Black Cat Trail" and "I'll Never Walk in Your Door". He used various pseudonyms during his brief recording career, including Country Paul, Jammin' Jim, Lazy Slim Jim and Paul Howard. He recorded only 27 songs, and details of his life outside of his music career are scant, and the reasons for the use of different names are unclear. 

R&B bandleader and pianist Sonny Thompson was probably born on August 23, 1916. I say "probably" because there's some confusion over both his birth date and even his birth name. You can check out the details on our website. Here’s what we do know. He began recording in 1946, and in 1948 achieved two #1 R&B chart hits – "Long Gone (Parts I and II)" and "Late Freight". The follow-ups "Blue Dreams" and "Still Gone" also reached the R&B chart. He had some R&B Top 10 successes with the singer Lula Reed, the biggest hit being "I'll Drown in My Tears". They ended up getting married sometime in the early 1950s. He continued to work as a session musician, and to perform with Reed into the early 1960s. 

Canadian blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer and songwriter Big Dave McLean was born in August 23 1952! In 2019, He was awarded the Order of Canada for his musical influence of Delta and Chicago blues and for mentoring musicians. Billboard noted that "Big Dave's been the quintessential behind-the-scene bluesman. He's done more to shape the Western Canadian blues scene than perhaps any other artist".

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 – we’ll see you then!