Browsing: C.C. Rider

The man called Snooky, born James Edward Pryor, picked up the harmonica at age 14, despite the objections of his preacher dad…

Songwriter, Guitarist, Producer. And one of the greatest voices of all time: Otis Redding.
Raw, powerful, tender—his sound defined a new kind of soul music. While Motown Records released smooth polished numbers, down south at Stax, Otis and his band came out with all the grit lacking up north…

This is the latest from The Bluesmobile’s C.C. Rider, who spends her life venerating the founding fathers of the blues. She’s walked the…

Wynonie Harris. The original lip-curler, the number one hip-thruster. Professional dancer and a consummate shouter…

There are lots of blind bluesmen. But there was only one Blind Willie Johnson. They called him the sightless visionary. A virtuoso on the bottleneck guitar, with a forceful, chilling voice…

Texas blues sprung up out of the land. From oil fields. Lumber yards. Levee Camps. But there’s really only one man who deserves credit for bringin’ this certain style out of the Lone Star state and out to the rest of the world. Blind Lemon Jefferson.

He was the King of the Jukebox. One of the first black artists to achieve crossover success. He was a band-leader. Songwriter. Multi-Instrumentalist. Killer dancer. He starred in shorts and feature films alike. He was a titan, and his name was Louis Jordan.

When it comes to American music, the true Bard of the Blues was Willie Dixon. He penned so many tracks you can find whole websites that are nothin’ but lists of his songs. So even if you haven’t heard of Willie Dixon, if you’ve heard any rock or blues at all, you’ve heard his stuff.

Zydeco dynamite Clifton Chenier was the baddest bluesman out of the bayou state. Zydeco’s a genre developed by Creole folks in southwestern Louisiana. It’s like a gumbo–a little bit of blues, a little bit of country, a little bit of sound all the bayou’s own. And it was made famous by Monsieur Chenier himself…

Here on American Blues Scene I often tell ya origin stories. The roots of a rock song, the birth of a legend of the blues. Today: the story of “C.C. Rider.”