10 of the most Famous Blues Singers

10 of the most Famous Blues Singers

Blues music originated from African American work songs and spiritual hymns only to explode in popularity in the 1920s. It developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is essentially a vocal form.

Mamie Smith recorded a song called Crazy Blues which is widely considered to be the first-ever recorded blues song. Blues songs are lyrical rather than narrative; blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories. The emotion expressed is generally one of sadness or melancholy, often due to problems of love but also oppression and hard times.

To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques such as melisma, rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a whining voice like sound. Let’s look at 10 of the most famous blues singers.

1. B.B. King

BB King on stage in Toronto. Photo by Kasra Ganjavi. Wikimedia Commons.

Born Riley B. King, singer and guitarist B.B. King got his start in Mississippi on a plantation near Indianola. At twenty-two, King hitched a ride to Memphis to launch his musical career. His career began to take off in 1948 after he adopted the name B.B. King as a catchy radio moniker.

By the mid-fifties, King was touring nationally. Over the next decade, his prestige would only continue to grow. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Rock and Roll Hall of fame three years later.

2. Muddy Waters

Singer and legendary blues guitarist McKinley Morganfield were born in 1915 in Issaquena, Mississippi. By the early 1940s, he was a semi-successful traveling musician. He made his way north to Chicago in 1943.

That year he was gifted his first electric guitar. In Chicago, Waters started recording music for record companies like Columbia and RCA. He continued to enjoy stardom and success for the rest of his life.

3. Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday. Photo by Unknown. Wikimedia Commons.

Born in Baltimore in 1915, Eleanora Fagan knew from an early age that she wanted to be a singer. By 1929, she was playing jazz clubs in New York, where she adopted the stage name Billie Holiday.

At eighteen, Holiday met a producer named John Hammond and after that, her career took off. She linked up with pianist Teddy Wilson and produced one hit after another. She won four Grammy awards posthumously and is generally regarded as one of the greatest female jazz singers of all time.

4. Ray Charles

Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia in 1930. When he was only six years old, Charles was rendered blind due to glaucoma. At fifteen, he left school and started playing for dance bands around Florida. He dropped his last name because he did not want to be confused with the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson.

He enjoyed one of the most successful musical careers of the 20th century and beyond. Throughout his storied career, he won seventeen Grammys, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Medal of the Arts.

5. Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix. Photo by Ary Groeneveld. Wikimedia Commons.

Born 1942 in Seattle, he was first called Johnny Allen Hendrix and then James Marshall Hendrix. Hendrix was drawn to music early on, teaching himself to play by ear. He bought his first guitar in 1958 and joined his first band soon after.

6. Etta James

Jamesetta Hawkins was born in 1938 in Los Angeles, California. She started vocal lessons at the tender age of five and soon became the star of her church choir. In 1954, the sixteen-year-old girl was discovered by the musician John Otis.

She recorded her first single that same year. She soon signed with Modern Records and began a string of hit records through the latter half of the 1950s. Her career success would continue until the 21st century with an album entitled Matriarch of the Blues.

7. Nina Simone

Portrait of the American singer Nina Simone, 1965. Photo by Ron Kroon. Wikimedia Commons.

Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Little Eunice could play piano by ear at the early age of three, and her parents encouraged her talents. Eunice began teaching music to young students to make ends meet, and in 1954 she auditioned to play at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City.

She soon made a name for herself there and changed her name to Nina Simone. Over the next half a century, Simone traveled the world, released over 40 albums with some hugely popular songs, even to this day. Her big hits include My Baby Just Cares for Me, ‘I Put a Spell on You’ and ‘Feeling Good ‘.

8. Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton was born in March of 1945 in Surrey England. As his mother was a teen when he was conceived, Clapton was raised by his grandparents and grew up believing his mother was his sister.

By 1966 he joined a band called Cream, and together they would record three albums and watch as their fame and popularity skyrocketed. Over time, Clapton would come to be known as one of the most legendary artists of his generation.

He’s is still producing albums today and will go down in history as one of the most famous blues singers to ever pick up a guitar and a microphone.

9. Buddy Guy

Buddy Guy was born in Louisiana in 1936, one of six siblings born to a sharecropping family out of Lettsworth. At seven, Guy crafted a makeshift guitar out of wood, two strings, and his mother’s hairpins.

By the time he was twenty-one, he took a real guitar to Chicago and joined up with other heavy hitters like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. He has maintained a legendary career ever since.

In 2012, he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor to celebrate his lifetime contribution to American culture. He also published a memoir that same year that became a bestseller.

10. Freddie King

Little Freddie King at the Crawfish Blues Festival, New Jersey. King is the winner of the “Big Easy” Music Award, Outstanding Blues Artist of 2008. Photo by Tony Fischer. Wikimedia Commons.

Freddie King was born in Gilmer Texas in 1934. He learned to play guitar under the tutelage of his uncle and his mother at a very young age. As a teenager, he was heavily inspired by the sounds coming from the Chicago blues scene.

In 1950, his family moved to the Windy City where he started regularly attending local blues clubs. By 1960, he signed with Federal Records and found minor success.

He continued to record songs, and by 1961, Freddie hit pay dirt with I Love the Woman. King continued his successful career path until the mid-1970s, when he died due to heart failure at forty-two years old.