Few people have done as much behind the scenes to support blues and folk music over the past 60 years as Mary Katherine Aldin. Always intent on shining the spotlight on the performers and not on herself, and valuing her privacy, Aldin actually declined induction into the Blues Hall of Fame 20 years ago. But the committee later put her name back on the ballot and now, with children and grandchildren to appreciate her life’s work, she has decided to accept the long-overdue honor.
Aldin began making contacts with musicians after she moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1962 by working at Ash Grove, the city’s legendary folk club. The first in a series of radio shows soon followed and she is still broadcasting on KPFK’s “Roots Music & Beyond” following long tenures on “Preaching the Blues” and “Alive and Pickin’,” which earned her entry into the Folk DJ Hall of Fame in 2018. She also began annotating and compiling blues and folk reissue albums for Rhino, Vanguard, MCA/Chess, Columbia, Decca, Mercury, Smithsonian Folkways, Hightone, and other labels. Her notes to The Chess Box by Muddy Waters were nominated for a GRAMMY®. Her writings include chapters in Nothing But the Blues and other books, and she once served as associate editor of Living Blues magazine and U.S. editor of the British periodical Blues & Rhythm: The Gospel Truth, in addition to publishing Blues Magazines: A Selective Index.
For 25 years Aldin worked for Folklore Productions, where her duties included securing publishing rights for the traditional artists the agency represented. A co-founder of the Southern California Blues Society, she served as a festival MC and organized fundraising benefits. Along with the way Aldin developed friendships not only with Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Long Gone Miles, Roy Brown, and others but also with many of their wives and children, who knew they could call on her for help if they needed to arrange or pay for funerals. Many archival materials from her career are now housed at the University of North Carolina and the University of Mississippi.
Mary Katherine Aldin, inducted in 2022 to The Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame
– Jim O’Neal, BluEsoterica.com