2011 Hall of Fame Inductees

British author John Broven's Walking to New Orleans was the first book on the Crescent City's vaunted R&B; legacy, and to many it remains the definitive work. Focusing on the recordings of Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Earl King, Art and Aaron Neville, and many others both famous and obscure, Broven weaves in the history of record labels, commentary by Doctor John and legendary studio engineer Cosimo Matassa, record charts, and related topics ranging from the musicians' union to jukeboxes. Many of the stories are told in the artists' own words, based on extensive interviews by Broven and others. A short addendum, "New Orleans 1978" by Tad Jones, was published with the U.S. edition, Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans. Walking to New Orleans: The Story of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues was initially published by Blues Unlimited, 1974 and then published in U.S. as Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans by Pelican, 1978.

Sam Cooke may be best remembered for his Top 40 hits and pioneering soul sounds, not to mention his gospel gems with the Soul Stirrers, but he had a profound gift for singing the blues, too. A blues lover from his heart, he cited Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker when asked to name his favorite singers in one magazine interview. Charles Brown was another obvious inspiration, as borne out by the Brown covers that grace Night Beat, Cooke's after-hours masterpiece. Forgoing the usual orchestrated productions of other RCA Victor sessions, Cooke recorded with a small combo featuring Billy Preston on organ. Several tracks reflect Cooke's ability to adapt gospel themes to blues, and the session even produced a hit single that far outsold the original by Howlin' Wolf - “Little Red Rooster” reached No. 2 on the Cash Box R&B; charts and No.11 on the pop charts.

False Accusations was the first Robert Cray album ever to hit the “Billboard 200” charts - quite a feat for an independent label blues release, and noteworthy enough to secure a major label deal for Cray to take his finely crafted blues and soul music to an even larger audience with subsequent albums. Cray's second LP for HighTone, False Accusations was recorded in Los Angeles under the production of Bruce Bromberg and Dennis Walker, who also joined Cray and bassist Richard Cousin in the songwriting collaboration. The title track was voted Blues Song of the Year in 1986 at the 7th Annual Blues Awards, now known as the Blues Music Awards.

Most of Chess Records' Real Folk Blues albums were compilations of singles recorded over a span of years (in Wolf's case, from 1956 to 1965). This album did not fit the usual definitions of “folk blues,” featuring instead Chicago urban blues by an incomparable singer and a host of great sidemen (including Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy), but Chess was making a move to remarket the blues to a new audience that had developed with the boom in folk music. This was Chess' second LP of Wolf singles, and a comment posted on the Blues Hall of Fame web site about the first LP applies to this one too: “Considering how many of the songs here have become standards in the repertoires of countless blues and rock bands, it's hard to fathom that none of these Wolf 45s sold well enough to make the Billboard R&B; charts.” The Real Folk Blues classics include “Killing Floor,” “Tail Dragger,” “Built for Comfort,” and “Three Hundred Pounds of Joy.”

Jimmy Witherspoon applied his ample pipes to revivals of several blues standards from the 1920s and '30s during his November 1947 sessions for Supreme Records in Los Angeles. “Ain't Nobody's Business” was first recorded in 1922-23 by several blues women under titles including “'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do,” most famously by Bessie Smith. Its message continued to resonate, as borne out by the remarkable success of Witherspoon's two-part rendition, which remained on the Billboard “race records” charts for 34 weeks. It was rated No.3 in all-time chart longevity in Joel Whitburn's Top R&B; Singles 1942-1988.

Eddie Boyd, a Chicago blues pianist, songwriter, and steel mill worker, came up with a true-to-life blues in 1952 that hit home with many a working man in “Five Long Years,” a No. 1 record on Billboard's R&B; jukebox chart for seven weeks. “If you ever been mistreated, well, you know what I'm talkin; about,” Boyd sang; “I worked five long years for one woman, then she had the nerve to put me out.” The song became a standard in the repertoire of countless blues bands and has been recorded by dozens of artists ranging from Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters to Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds. The single features L.C. McKinley on guitar and Ernest Cotton on sax.

In honor of the 2011 Robert Johnson Centennial celebrations, “Love in Vain” joins several Johnson classics that have already been enshrined in the Blues Hall of Fame. Johnson's poignant original was cut in 1937 in Dallas and, though not a big seller upon its release, it has since become a widespread favorite through the Rolling Stones' version in 1969 and the many Robert Johnson reissue albums. Johnson's melody is modeled on the 1935 Leroy Carr recording “When the Sun Goes Down.”

Skip James' 1931 recordings for the Paramount label in Grafton, Wisconsin, all but vanished after their limited release during the Depression, now ranking among the rarest and highest-priced records on the collectors' market. But through reissues and James' own brief blues revival career in the '60s, James' body of work is recognized as an aesthetic pinnacle of blues recording. An idiosyncratic, ethereal approach permeates his music, as does a deep aura of despair on “Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues,” among others. “Killing floor” was slang for the slaughterhouse room where animals were killed; as James used the term, “If I ever get off this killin' floor, I'll never get down this low no more.”

Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken were the “Vee” and “Jay” in Vee-Jay Records, at one time the largest black-owned record company in the world. Vee-Jay is renowned for its catalog of blues classics by Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Billy Boy Arnold, and many more, as well as doo-wop, soul, gospel and jazz gems, and pop hits by the Four Seasons and the Beatles. Vee-Jay's expansion into the 1960s pop market was explosive, but led to financial and legal problems that finally brought its demise. Carter, who was a popular disc jockey, and Bracken began with a record store in Gary, Indiana, and borrowed $500 from a pawnbroker to launch their label in 1953 with the Spaniels and Jimmy Reed. The couple married that year in Chicago. Vivian's brother Calvin Carter produced many of the label's hits. After Vee-Jay's Chicago offices were shuttered in 1966, Vivian went back to radio, while Jimmy Bracken tried his hand with J-V and other small labels he operated from a small record store in Chicago. Vivian Carter, who was born in Tunica County, Mississippi, on March 25, 1921, came to Gary with her parents as a youngster. She died in Gary on June 12, 1989. James C. “Jimmy” Bracken, born in Oklahoma on May 23, 1909 (or 1908 according to some sources), was raised in Kansas City, Kansas. He died in Chicago on Feb. 20, 1972.

John W. Work, III, was a noted African American educator, composer, choral director, scholar, and folklorist whose 39-year career at Fisk University in Nashville (1927-1966) was filled with accolades. Work held degrees from Fisk, Columbia and Yale and was well versed in the music favored by academia, but what set him apart from his contemporaries was the value he placed on African American folk, blues, and gospel music. Although the full extent of his work in the blues was not appreciated until long after his death, he left a valuable legacy of field recordings that includes the first Library of Congress sides by Muddy Waters, conducted in conjunction with a team that included Alan Lomax, in addition to many other recordings from Mississippi, Nashville, and Fort Valley, Georgia. Work's historic descriptions of the 1941-42 Library of Congress project in Mississippi, complete with musical transcriptions, were published in the acclaimed book Lost Delta Found in 2005. Work was born in Tullahoma, Tennessee, on June 15, 1901, and carried on his family's church choir tradition when he became director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. He died on May 17, 1967, not long after his retirement from Fisk.

Samuel Charters piloted much of the 1960s blues revival in America, navigating a story line of the blues for a fascinated new audience through his extensive writings and record productions. Charters, born in Pittsburgh on Aug. 1, 1929, began his music chronicling with New Orleans jazz, publishing an index to Crescent City jazz artists under the name Samuel Barclay Charters IV. Blues soon became his focus, and he began doing field recordings in 1955, searching out both the surviving elder statesmen and younger undiscovered talent, gathering their stories as well as their music. His Country Blues (1959) was a landmark book, pulling together the threads of blues history in both a musical and cultural context. It was, in his words, “an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help” for the blues artists. Charters remained a leading figure in blues documentation and recording, producing albums for Folkways, Vanguard, Prestige/Bluesville, Sonet, and other labels, ranging from traditional Piedmont and Memphis blues to the eye-opening Chicago/The Blues/Today! set of electric Chicago blues, and publishing more books on blues and jazz, along with works of fiction and poetry. Disenchanted with U.S. politics during the Vietnam war, Charters moved to Sweden in 1971 and later began dividing his time between Sweden and Connecticut, where the University of Connecticut now houses the Samuel and Ann Charters Archive of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture.

Bruce Bromberg has been one of the premier producers of blues and roots music of the past 40 years, known especially for his work with Robert Cray. Although he was born in the blues capital of Chicago on Oct. 31, 1941, and raised there and in suburban Park Forest, country music was one of his earliest interests. His appreciation of the storytelling structure of country songs influenced his own work as a producer and songwriter in blues and other genres. After the Bromberg family moved to Los Angeles in 1958, he worked for various record labels at different jobs - warehousing for Dot Records, recording Lightnin' Hopkins for the Vault label, co-producing a Kent blues reissue series with Frank Scott, and operating his own Joliet label. His productions by Driftin' Slim, Phillip Walker, Lonesome Sundown, Tony Mathews, Ted Hawkins, Cray and others appeared on a variety of imprints, including Rounder, Alligator, Playboy and Tomato, until, in a quandary about choosing a label for a 1983 Cray session that he felt held great potential, he made the perspicacious move of launching HighTone Records in partnership with Larry Sloven. That Cray album, Bad Situation, set Cray's star on the rise and established Bromberg and Dennis Walker as the label's producing-songwriting team. The pair also produced Cray's breakthrough albums on Mercury. Bromberg had an ear for blues artists who could advance the idiom at HighTone, like Cray, Joe Louis Walker, James Armstrong, and Chris Thomas King, as well as for roots, rockabilly, country and folk standouts including Joe Ely, Billy Lee Riley, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Tom Waits and Dave Alvin. After an impressive quarter century, Bromberg and Sloven sold HighTone in 2008 to Shout! Factory.

Robert Cray helped reenergize the blues scene in the 1980s with a fresh, appealing blend of blues and soul music that even crashed the pop charts. Between 1986 and 1999 his consummate vocals and guitar work graced 10 albums that hit the “Billboard 200” charts, including four that won Grammys and three that earned Blues Music Awards or W.C. Handy Awards. For Cray, the son of an Army quartermaster born in Columbus, Georgia, on Aug. 1, 1953, the journey to stardom began in Tacoma, Washington, when he and schoolmate Richard Cousins began playing in bands together. A following developed in the Pacific Northwest and in 1978 Cray recorded the first of five albums under the aegis of producer Bruce Bromberg. With his second LP, Bad Influence, Cray became the talk of the blues world, garnering four Blues Awards in 1984 for best vocalist, album, single, and song. Amidst a heavy touring schedule, the Robert Cray Band continued to make recordings that stretched the boundaries of blues and, with Strong Persuader, established Cray as a pop icon. Cray has continued to deliver crowd-pleasing live performances while producing his own albums, consistently ranking high on the blues charts. With his induction Cray becomes the youngest member of the Blues Hall of Fame. Two of his albums - Strong Persuader and False Accusations - are now in the Hall of Fame, as well as his historic Showdown! collaboration with Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland.

John Hammond, one of the most noted performers to emerge from the folk-blues revival of the 1960s, has sustained a consistent career and maintained a loyal following by remaining true to his sources as he reinterprets the works of the blues masters. John Paul Hammond, sometimes called John Hammond, Jr., is the son of famed record producer John Henry Hammond, Jr. (1910-1987). Born in New York City on Nov. 13, 1942, Hammond was inspired by a Jimmy Reed performance at the Apollo Theater. As a teenager he devoted himself to the blues, becoming something of an instant sensation on the festival and coffeehouse circuit and playing alongside legends such as Big Joe Williams. The first of his more than 30 albums, the self-titled John Hammond LP on Vanguard (1963), featured his renditions of classics by Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, and others, a pattern he usually followed until he began to pen some of his own tunes on recent releases. Although best known as a solo performer, accompanying himself on guitar and racked harmonica, Hammond has often performed and recorded with bands. Various albums have featured him with the Muscle Shoals studio band, the Nighthawks, Little Charlie & the Nightcats, and The Band (when they were still Levon Helm & the Hawks), among other aggregations. Blues Foundation voters have rewarded Hammond with five Blues Music Awards as acoustic blues artist of the year and two more for the albums Wicked Grin and Got Love If You Want It. Following the elder John Hammond's election to the Blues Hall of Fame in 2008, the Hammonds become the hall's first father and son inductees.

Denise LaSalle has reigned as the Queen of the Blues on the Southern soul circuit for years, famed for her many self-penned hits as well as her bold and bawdy stage act. LaSalle, born Ora Denise Allen on a Sidon, Mississippi, plantation, on July 16, 1939, spent some of her childhood in Belzoni, a town that continues to bring her back home for festivals and tributes. She showed her writing talents as a teen when she wrote stories for True Confessions and Tan. A gospel singer at first, Allen chose LaSalle as her stage name when she started singing rhythm & blues in Chicago. Blues singer Billy “The Kid” Emerson recorded her debut for his Tarpon label in 1967, and LaSalle had a No. 1 R&B; single with “Trapped By A Thing Called Love” on Westbound in 1971. More hits followed, as did the development of her spicy onstage language. LaSalle moved to Jackson, Tennessee, in 1977, and in the 1980s began a long tenure with Malaco Records of Jackson, Mississippi, at first writing songs such as the Z.Z. Hill favorite “Someone Else is Steppin' In.” With her own Malaco recordings she came to be marketed as a blues singer for the first time, and she quickly established herself as an important figure on the chittlin' circuit. In 1986 she founded the National Association for the Preservation of the Blues to recognize artists performing in the Southern soul/blues style, a genre often overlooked by mainstream and traditional blues media. In recent years, LaSalle has recorded gospel as well as blues and soul.

Big Maybelle, one of the most powerful and expressive blues vocalists of the 1950s, led a life that was, as a sticker on one of her albums advertised, “One part triumph, two parts tragedy.” In her triumphs her star shone brightly as a hit recording artist and headline act on the R&B; circuit; in her tragedies, heroin addiction, health issues and personal problems darkened her horizon. Born Mabel Louise Smith in Jackson, Tennessee, on May 1, 1924, she won a singing contest at Memphis' Cotton Carnival and began performing in the 1930s with a band led by Dave Clark, who would gain later fame as a record promoter. She made her first record as vocalist with Christine Chatman and her Orchestra in 1944 and had Top Ten R&B; hits with the OKeh label in 1953 (“Gabbin' Blues”, “My Country Man,” and “Way Back Home”), in addition to recording the first version of “Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On.” “Candy,” “Don't Pass Me By,” and her cover of “96 Tears” made the charts in later years as she recorded for a succession of different labels. She appeared at the Apollo Theater and many other top chittlin' circuit venues, as well as in a film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, but her reputation and health suffered from her drug habit, which often left her penniless and turned engagements into no-shows. Still, at her peak, reports indicate she could bring audiences to tears with her true-to-life blues or leave them laughing with her comic routines. Big Maybelle, a big woman indeed at 250 or 300 pounds, died in a comatose state in a Cleveland hospital on Jan. 23, 1972, suffering from diabetes.

Alberta Hunter was a leading diva during the first wave of classic blues recording in the early 1920s and astonished the world with a remarkable singing comeback in 1977 when at the age of 82. Born in Memphis on April 1, 1895, Hunter took a trip to Chicago with her schoolteacher when she was eleven and decided not to go back home. She soon found a job singing at a sporting house she called Dago Frank's and eventually became a regular attraction at the Dreamland Café before moving to New York City in 1923. She began an extensive recording career in 1921, and in 1922 waxed one of her most famous tunes, “Down Hearted Blues,” later a hit for Bessie Smith. Hunter spent most of his career in New York and made the first of several transatlantic voyages in 1927 to perform in Europe, where she became a popular cabaret singer. She came home to work with USO shows in the 1940s and '50s, but in 1957 her professional course changed when her mother became ill and Hunter became a practical nurse. Although she did do two recording sessions in 1961, she put her singing career on hold until she retired from nursing. Her return to performing, at Café Society and then at the Cookery in New York, brought renewed glory to one of the grand ladies of the blues, and she recorded four albums for Columbia as well as a live album at the Cookery during her final years. She died in Roosevelt Island, N.Y., on Oct, 17, 1984.

J.B. Lenoir never achieved the level of stardom of some of his Chicago blues contemporaries, but his musical and political legacies ensured that he would be remembered long after his death at the age of 38 in 1967. On the Chicago scene he was most renowned for boogies and blues, sung in such a high-pitched voice that some listeners thought the singer was female. “Mama, Talk to Your Daughter” (his only chart hit, from 1955), “How Much More” and “Mojo Boogie” entered the repertoires of many other Chicago bluesmen. Lenoir also created a small political stir with a lament on economic woes that he titled “Eisenhower Blues.” But it was his 1965-66 recordings, made for the European market and seldom heard in America until years later, that have earned him posthumous acclaim as a spokesman for civil rights and the antiwar movement. Those moving songs, produced by Willie Dixon (who would record more political material himself in subsequent years), include “Alabama March,” “Born Dead,” “Down in Mississippi,” and “Vietnam.” Lenoir was one of the rare bluesmen of his era to speak out so overtly on such topics in his songs. Lenoir (pronounced Lenore), who was born on March 5, 1929, on a farm near Monticello in southern Mississippi, learned guitar from his father, and lived in Gulfport and New Orleans (the city he saluted in “Mojo Boogie”) before moving to Chicago in 1949. He toured Europe in 1965 and 1966 and was poised to take his career to a new level, at least overseas, but at home he had taken a kitchen job at the University of Illinois. All too soon, he was gone - three weeks after an auto accident, Lenoir's heart failed. He was pronounced dead on arrival at an Urbana, Illinois, hospital, on April 29, 1967. British blues icon John Mayall recorded two songs in tribute to a “friend and great poet,” and released a Lenoir LP on his Crusade imprint, and filmmaker Wim Wenders brought the J.B. Lenoir story to life in his documentary Soul of a Man, part of Martin Scorsese's The Blues series on PBS in 2003.