The Blues Foundation’s 2025 Blues Hall of Fame Inductees

Performers

Bob Stroger, still actively touring at the age of 94, is reaping the rewards for his decades of laying the foundation for countless blues bands. No performer has ever been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at an older age. He was also the 2024 recipient of the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist – Bass, the fifth time he had earned the honor.

Stroger had been a journeyman bassist with several small blues, R&B and jazz groups in Chicago before he became a steady, recognizable fixture on the international blues scene, initially thanks to his work behind Otis Rush starting in 1975. Even then, his surname (pronounced STRO-jer) was so unfamiliar to fellow musicians (and record producers) that the first times his name appeared in album credits he was listed as “Bob Strokes,” the way Rush and Sunnyland Slim knew him.

Robert T. Stroger was born December 27, 1930, on a farm between Hayti and Swift in the Missouri bootheel. He only took an interest in music after he moved to Chicago, especially when he lived on the West Side so close to the legendary Silvio’s that he could look out and see Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf through the windows. In 1949 he married the sister of guitarist Johnny Ferguson, who played in J.B. Hutto’s band. With further encouragement from Calvin “Fuzz” Jones and Bob Anderson, he learned guitar with the strings tuned to provide bass accompaniment before buying a four-string electric bass. He and his brother John had a group once called the Red Tops and then Joe Russell and the Blues Hustlers– eschewing the Stroger name another time for an easier pseudonym. Stroger went on to play locally with jazz saxophonist Rufus Forman (briefly), bluesman Morris Pejoe and others, enjoying a long stint with guitarist Eddie King playing blues and soul. His first studio recordings were with King in the 1960s. At times he also did factory work, ran a confectionery store and worked as an exterminator. In the 1950 census he described his job as “Make kitchen gadgets.”

Through Otis Rush’s drummer Jesse Green Stroger found a spot in Rush’s band, which led to studio and club work and his first European tours. Rush helped Stroger hone his playing into a strong, solid blues groove. Sunnyland Slim was a regular employer, and he also played and recorded with Snooky Pryor, Pinetop Perkins, Wille “Big Eyes” Smith, Jimmy Rogers, Carey Bell, Eddie C. Campbell, the band Mississippi Heat, Bob Corritore and many others, in the U.S. and overseas. At the urging of Sunnyland Slim he began singing and first recorded as a vocalist in 1993 on one track of a Mississippi Heat CD and then on a German CD credited to the Big Four Blues Band (with Steve Freund, Robert Covington and Sam Burckhardt).
His first CD under his own name was “In the House: Live at Lucerne, Vol. 1,” from the 1998 Lucerne Blues Festival, released by Crosscut in 2002, followed by “Bob Is Back in Town” on Airway (2006), “Keepin’ Together” on Big Eye (with Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith, 2014) and “That’s My Name” on Delmark (with a Brazilian band, the Headcutters, 2022). He also appears on various festival CDs from Lucerne and elsewhere and has joined several all-star aggregations. He has recently toured in a Chicago Blues SuperSession package, beaming with pleasure at still being able to do what he loves onstage. Grateful for the help offered him along his path to success especially by Rush, Sunnyland, Jimmy Dawkins and Eddie Taylor, he has in turn passed his knowledge and advice along, providing instructions to young musicians at the Pinetop Perkins Foundation in Clarksdale, Mississippi, every year.

William Bell, best known for his pioneering work at Stax Records in Memphis, has kept that honored legacy alive during his long career as soulful singer, songwriter, producer and label owner. Bell’s music has also encompassed gospel, doo-wop, jazz, R&B, blues, reggae, funk, disco and collaborations with rappers, and in recent years he has been a perennial contender in the soul blues categories of the Blues Music Awards.

Born William Henry Yarbrough in Memphis on July 16, 1939, he took the name Bell in honor of his grandmother, whose name was Belle, He started singing in church and began writing songs and recording as a teenager with a vocal group, the Del-Rios. He also worked with Phineas Newborn Sr.’s jazz group and found a mentor in another older Memphis veteran, Rufus Thomas. In 1961 Chips Moman produced Bell’s first solo record at Stax, the plaintive “You Don’t Miss the Water,” which hit “Cash Box” magazine’s national charts in 1962 and set Bell on tour. But Uncle Sam interrupted his trajectory by calling him into the U.S. Army for two years. Bell stayed with Stax, recording several albums and scoring 14 more hits on either the “Billboard” or “Cash Box” R&B or pop singles charts through 1974, including two duets with Judy Clay. He wrote songs with Booker T. Jones and others recorded by various Stax artists, including “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which became a classic for Albert King. Bell and Jones also produced King’s “Crosscut Saw.”

Bell and his manager, Atlanta promoter Henry Wynn, started their own label, Peachtree, in 1968 and recorded Mitty Collier, Johnny Jones & the King Casuals and others. Bell moved to Atlanta and pursued an acting career while also establishing another label, Wilbe, to release records by himself, bluesman Joey Gilmore and others. A Wilbe production deal with Mercury Records garnered him his best selling LP, 1977’s “Coming Back for More,” and his only No. 1 R&B single, “Tryin’ to Love Two.” Further hits followed on Kat Family and Wilbe. He was featured in “Take Me to River’ both as a televised 2014 documentary on Memphis music and on tour.

Stax, revived under new ownership, released his live album “This Is Where I Live,” which won the GRAMMY Award as Best Americana Album of 2016. Bell is still active with his Wilbe label and songwriting, with nearly 300 songs registered at the performance rights organization BMI. His songs have been recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, Linda Ronstadt, Otis Redding, Robert Cray, Bruce Springsteen and a plethora of others in many genres. He has continued to bolster his resume with appearances at the Chicago Blues Festival, the White House, and other events, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, a 1997 Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, and induction into halls of fame in Georgia, North Carolina and Memphis.

Blind Willie Johnson never recorded the blues, but the Texas guitar evangelist’s music has enraptured a multitude of blues fans and musicians for nearly a century. His genre has come to be called “holy blues” for its similarities to the blues format, its intensity and the superb slide guitar technique. “The Soul of a Man,” an episode in Martin Scorsese’s documentary series ”The Blues,” was named after a 1930 Johnson record and featured bluesman Chris Thomas King portraying Johnson—and actor Laurence Fishburne voicing Johnson in the scripted narration. And when the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were launched in 1977, they each carried a recording, “The Sounds of Earth,” with audio tracks including Johnson ’s “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground.”

He was born Willie Johnson Jr, on January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, according to information he supplied when he registered for the World War I draft in Houston, although different dates and birthplaces have been cited elsewhere. Blinded as a child, reportedly by his stepmother, he took up guitar and based some of his music on hymns he learned in church in Marlin, Texas. Playing streetcorners, churches, and revivals with a tin cup tied to his guitar for tips, he befriended other blind street musicians and traveled through Texas and beyond.

He first recorded in Dallas for Columbia in 1927. The company hailed his music as “nothing like anything else” in advertisements, and he became one of the most popular Black recording artists of the era until the Depression hit the record industry, and he never recorded after 1930. He met blues and gospel guitarist Blind Willie McTell at a Columbia session in Atlanta and the pair traveled and performed together, according to McTell. A preacher who knew him recalled Johnson once playing on one street corner while the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson was playing on another. In addition to his itinerant performing career the pious Johnson also pastored his own churches as Reverend W.J. Johnson at times.

Among his best known recordings were “Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time” (aka “Motherless Children”), “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” “John the Revelator,” “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed,” “Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Crying,” Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” “God Moves on the Water,” and “Let Your Light Shine on Me.” Most were religious but he also delivered morality messages and topical songs—but not blues per se. Even so, “Dark Was the Night,” which he hummed and moaned without actual lyrics, was selected as a Classic of Blues Recording by the Blues Hall of Fame in 1999. Many blues, folk and rock stars later recorded songs from the Johnson repertoire including Son House, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. The 2016 Alligator CD “God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson” featured interpretations by Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Rickie Lee Jones, the Blind Boys of Alabama and others.

Johnson’s vocals often erupted into harsh, raspy declamations, sometimes enhanced by the sweet phrases sung by Willie B. Richardson. Later known as Willie B. Harris, she and another woman, Angeline Johnson, both claimed to have married Johnson and provided much of what we know about him. Angeline (aka Angilena, Anna, Anna Bell, Annie or Antonia in various documents) was the older sister of blues steel guitarist L.C. “Good Rockin’” Robinson, who cited Johnson as an early influence. Johnson died September 18, 1945, of malarial fever after a fire destroyed his home and House of Prayer church in Beaumont. The Texas Historical Commission placed a marker at the site in 2010.

Henry Townsend, a key contributor to the St. Louis blues sound of the pre-World War era, enjoyed one of the longest careers in blues history. He recorded in every decade from the 1920s through the 2000s and was preparing to perform at a festival when he died on September 24, 2006, at the age of 96. A few months later he shared a posthumous GRAMMY Award for the album “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas,” recorded alongside fellow veterans Robert Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards and Pinetop Perkins.

Townsend was not a Delta blues stylist, although he was born in the Delta town of Shelby on October 27, 1909. His family moved to other locales in Mississippi, Memphis, Caruthersvlle, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois, where Townsend caught a freight train to St. Louis to avoid a beating from his father. Inspired in St. Louis by guitar icon Lonnie Johnson, Clifford Gibson, Henry Spaulding, and other local bluesmen, Townsend bought his first guitars. He found he had a gift not only as an instrumental virtuoso but also as a lyricist who could improvise new songs on the spot. On November 15, 1929, at the age 20, Townsend made his first records for Columbia.

Townsend made further records for Paramount, Victor and Bluebird in the 1930s and played on sessions by St. Louis-based artists Roosevelt Sykes, Walter Davis, Robert Lee McCoy (aka Robert Nighthawk), Big Joe Williams, and Pine Top Sparks, as well as Memphis Minnie on one outing to Chicago. He played guitar on—and said he wrote—the first-ever version of “Every Day I Have the Blues” by Sparks in 1935. He most frequently teamed with pianists Sykes or Davis in taverns and nightclubs, and also played with Robert Johnson, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson and many others, while also working as a taxi driver. He learned piano from Sykes and in return taught Sykes some guitar. After serving in World War II he moved to Chicago and recorded for the Bullet label in 1948 but as public tastes in blues changed, he decided to find steady employment back in St. Louis as a hotel manager and then as an insurance collector. Whether as a musician or in other work, he was known for his thoughtful, businesslike, and uncompromising demeanor. He earned the nickname “Mule” for his stubborn, determined nature.

As researchers sought out older bluesmen in the 1960s, several of Townsend’s prewar recordings were reissued on LP and he began to record again. He recorded full albums for Prestige/Bluesville, Adelphi, Nighthawk, Swingmaster, Wolf, Blueberry Hill and APO and made appearances on several others. He performed at festivals and concerts in the U.S. and Europe playing guitar and piano, sometimes with his wife Vernell, and served as a mentor to young musicians in St. Louis. As a former Paramount recording artist, he was scheduled to highlight the inaugural Paramount Blues Festival in Grafton, Wisconsin, in 2006 but fell ill when he arrived and passed away in a hospital in nearby Mequon.

Townsend was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship in 1985 and was honored on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1995.  His autobiography, “A Blues Life: Henry Townsend,” as told to Bill Greensmith, was published in 1999.

Jessie Mae Hemphill cut a unique and colorful figure as queen of the North Mississippi Hill Country blues scene. A three-time winner as traditional female blues artist of the year in the 1987, 1988 and 1994 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (later renamed the Blues Music Awards), Hemphill came from a long line of musicians dating back to her great-grandfather Dock Hemphill and including her parents and aunts as well as her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, who recorded for Alan Lomax and Lewis Jones  in 1942. Her rhythmic, rough-hewn music was spirited and gritty–unadorned, in contrast to her sequined apparel, wigs, cowboy hats, and other bold accoutrements.

Born Jessie Mae Graham in Panola, Mississippi, on October 18, 1923 (a decade before the birthdate she claimed), she learned drums and guitar as a child and played in various fife and drum bands at Hill Country picnics over the years, first with Sid Hemphill and later with Napolian Strickland, Otha Turner and others. She lived in Memphis on and off during the 1940s and ‘50s and worked as an elevator operator and as a waitress at several cafes and clubs. She performed at times but her musical career did not gain momentum until she began recording and touring as a singer-guitarist in the late 1970s. To enhance the rhythmic impact of her modal one-chord style, she also played a tambourine with her foot and later added ankle bells.

Folklorist George Mitchell first recorded Hemphill in 1967 but those sides were not released until 2008 by Fat Possum. David Evans of Memphis State University produced most of Hemphill’s records and also played guitar behind her on many sessions and personal appearances. Two singles and an LP were released on the university’s High Water label, but the first album, “She-Wolf,” came out on a French label, Vogue, in 1981. Other labels including Hightone/HMG, Inside Sounds and Mississippi Records, also later released material from Evans’ sessions. The High Water LP “Feelin’ Good” won a 1991 Handy Award. Her work has also been featured on Black & Blue and Wolf. Hemphill played a drum on a 1980 European tour (the first by an African-American fife and drum band) and in the 1991 documentary “Deep Blues.” She and Abe Young played drums with fife blower Otha Turner on the childrens’ TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in 1982. She was later featured in a French documentary by Marc Oriol, “Me & My Guitar, Jessie Mae Hemphill.”

Hemphill became a favorite on the traditional blues circuit in the U.S. and internationally but her blues career was cut short by a stroke in 1993 that left her unable to play guitar. She still entertained visitors with her stories at her trailer home and could still sing and play tambourine—but abdicated the blues and devoted herself to gospel music. Her last recording was a double gospel CD also released on DVD, “Dare You to Do It Again,” in 2004, on 219 Records. Hemphill died in Memphis hospital on October 22, 2006. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker was placed in 2011 at the cemetery where she was buried in Senatobia.

Individuals – Business, Production, Media, & Academic

Bob Geddins produced a treasure trove of records that defined the down-home blues and gospel sounds of the San Francisco/Oakland area in the post-World War II years. While West Coast blues is often associated with smoother, polished urban styles, Geddins’ most memorable records often were raw excursions into desolation and gloom—“Tin Pan Alley” by Roy Hawkins being a prime example. His productions reflected the influences and tastes of many Black workers and musicians who migrated to the Bay Area for jobs during and after the war from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Most of Lowell Fulson’s early records were cut for Geddins, who also recorded Jimmy McCracklin, Roy Hawkins, K.C. Douglas, Johnny Fuller, L.C. “Good Rockin’” Robinson, Mercy Dee Walton, Juke Boy Bonner, Saunders King, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Big Mama Thornton, and many gospel groups. The records often spotlighted the guitar exploits of Lafayette Thomas, Ulysses James or Johnny Heartsman.

Robert Lee Geddins was born on February 6, 1913, in Highbank, Texas, near Marlin (onetime home of fellow 2025 Blues Hall of Fame inductee Blind Willie Johnson). He had heard the blues on records and at Saturday night suppers before he hopped a westbound train in the 1930s. He saw an opportunity to market music in the Bay Area after starting out in Los Angeles, where he worked at a drug store and for the city’s streets department before opening a record store.  He began recording in 1945 at Bay Area radio stations and over the years operated record stores, repair shops, studios and pressing plants from several business locations. His earliest releases included the Rising Star Gospel Singers, Fulson, and his own vocal blues “Irma Jean Blues,” named after his wife. He owned or partnered in various record labels, including Down Town, Cava-Tone, Big Town, Rhythm, Irma, Art-Tone, Plaid, Check, Shirley, Vel, Veltone, Gedinson’s and Wax, and made deals to release his songs or productions on other labels—Trilon, Gilt Edge, Swing Time, Modern, Specialty, Aladdin and Chess/Checker among them.

McCracklin had the biggest hit with “Just Got to Know” on Art-Tone in 1961, while other records that charted nationally included Sugar DeSanto’s “I Want to Know” (1960), Jimmy Wilson’s “Tin Pan Alley” (1953), Fulson’s “Three O’Clock Blues” (1948), and Roy Hawkins’ Modern sides “Why Do Things Happen to Me” (1950) and “The Thrill Is Gone” (1951). The latter three were all later recorded by B.B. King, and other Geddins productions or compositions likewise gained more fame through cover versions. The Steve Miller Band and Alan Jackson scored with K.C. Douglas’ “Mercury Boogie” and Jumpin’ Gene Simmons hit the pop charts with “Haunted House,” which Johnny Fuller had waxed as a rock ‘n’ roll novelty in 1958 for Specialty. Fuller and Geddins also came up with “Johnny Ace’s Last Letter,” which only made the charts when covered by Johnny Moore’s Blazers, and “Fool’s Paradise,” recorded by Charles Brown and Mose Allison. Buddy Guy’s Chess single “My Time After While” is much better known than the original Tiny Powell version on Geddins’ Wax label. Geddins had paid little attention to writing and publishing rights when he began but was able to file 74 compositions with BMI over the years. McCracklin and Geddins disputed each other’s authorship of various songs but worked together for years. McCracklin taught piano to Geddins’ son Bob Jr. and brought him into his band, and the junior Geddins participated in recording sessions with many artists.

Although he profited from occasional hits, too many business arrangements resulted in Geddins’ loss of money, master tapes, or song rights. He rarely had the cash to build and promote his would-be music empire—especially when he had a wife and 13 children to support. Record-keeping was not a strong suit either, and piecing together a definitive chronology of his massive output has posed a task for puzzled discographers and historians. But the musical legacy he left was singularly impressive. Lowell Fulson recalled, “Bob Geddins would bring out the best in an artist. If you had talent he’d draw it out of you. He taught me how to rephrase the blues and how to breathe properly.”

Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records compiled some of Geddins’ quintessential gutbucket blues productions on an “Oakland Blues” LP in 1970. JSP and other labels have issued more extensive CD anthologies in the years since, showcasing blues of both hardcore and more contemporary varieties, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, R&B and novelty material such as a song by “The Mystery Man” (Geddins himself) taking on an Italian accent on “Loueggie Blues.”

Geddins’ work stands as an enduring legacy of the days when Oakland’s 7^th Street was a vibrant center of Black business and nightlife, overflowing with musical talent. Geddins, who was awarded a key to the city in 1983, is honored with a plaque on the 7^th Street Walk of Fame. He died on February 16, 1991, of liver cancer, still recovering from a stabbing suffered when was robbed while cashing a royalty check.

Classic of Blues Literature

Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues by Beth and Paul Garon (1992)

Paul and Beth Garon saluted Memphis Minnie’s iconic status as a premier blues artist and symbolic feminist figure in the initial publication of “Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues” in 1992 by Da Capo Press. A revised edition from City Lights Books in 2014 added considerably to the chapters on her life and career that begin the book, with a foreword by Jim O’Neal and more detailed appendices and documentation based largely on various contributors’ online research into sources not available in 1992. The biographical section brought research up to date on Lizzie Douglas, whose nom du disque became Memphis Minnie when she began recording 1929. Often teamed with her first husband, Kansas Joe McCoy, or her second, Ernest “Little Son Joe” Lawlars, in Memphis and Chicago, she became one of the most prolific and accomplished blues artists of the 1930s and ‘40s. Famed both for her skills on guitar and her song lyrics, she was a tough, pugnacious and independent force who held her own in the very male-dominated blues world of her time. Paul, who wrote the text, and wife Beth, who aided in the crucial research and compilation, also dealt with the creative aspects of her songs and the meaning behind her words, employing both psychoanalytic and surrealist interpretations. The academic language and analyses challenged readers to find new insights when listening to blues.

Classic of Blues Recording – Album

Lightnin’ Hopkins: Gold Star Sessions (Arhoolie CDs, 1990-91, originally released on Arhoolie LPs as Early Recordings, 1963, and Early Recordings Vol 2, 1971)

Lightnin’ Hopkins was recording at a furious pace for various companies in the early 1960s, utilizing his uncanny ability to improvise new songs and adapt old ones on the spot. He had no bigger fan than Chris Strachwitz, owner of Arhoolie Records, who joined the fray, not only recording Hopkins anew but reissuing classic sides recorded for Bill Quinn’s Gold Star label in Houston from 1947 to 1950. Most of the sides, featuring Hopkins alone on guitar, were first issued on Gold Star 78s but several tracks on the 1963 “Early Recordings” LP and the second 1971 volume had never been released before. Hopkins also took a seat at the organ on one session. Each volume contained 16 tracks, expanded to 24 when later issued on CD (now available from Smithsonian Folkways). Strachwitz’ liner notes illuminated Hopkins’ music and his ways, which included going to Quinn’s studio to cut a few sides when he needed cash. These are prime examples of down-home Texas blues and boogies by the man Strachwitz praised as “the most creative folk poet of our time who is without doubt the King of the Blues.”

Classics of Blues Recording – Singles

Bessie Smith: “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” (Columbia, 1923)

Blues empress Bessie Smith delivered one of her finest, most expressive performances on “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” a classic hard times blues recorded for Columbia in New York on May 15, 1929. Smith evocatively hummed some of the lines with a band including cornetist Ed Allen and pianist Clarence Williams. The song had been recorded earlier by Pine Top Smith and Bobby Leecan, but it was Smith’s rendition that became an influential classic.

It has been recorded by hundreds of artists including Nina Simone, Louis Jordan, LaVern Baker, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, and Bobby Womack. In his book “Bessie,” Smith biographer Chris Albertson suggested that her heightened emotions in the studio may have been prompted by bad newspaper reviews that morning of her only Broadway play, “Pansy.” Vaudeville performer Jimmie Cox was credited with writing the song. Some of its key lyrics however had earlier appeared on sheet music in 1906 in a song called “All In Down and Out” with words by R.C. McClendon (Cecil Mack).

Sylvester Weaver: “Guitar Rag” (OKeh, 1923)

Sylvester Weaver was the Louisville musician who introduced the guitar to blues recording in 1923, first accompanying singer Sara Martin and then on his own solo sides, promoted with a flurry of fanfare about his innovative technique from OKeh Records. He recorded “Guitar Rag” at his first session on November 2, 1923, and again on April 1, 1927, for OKeh in Chicago. Martin received a co-writer credit.

The smooth bottleneck/slide number has lived on as a Western swing and country music standard, “Steel Guitar Rag,” after Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys recorded it in 1936 with Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar.

Irma Thomas: “Don’t Mess With My Man” (Ron, 1959)

“Don’t Mess With My Man,” Irma Thomas’ first record, hit the “Billboard” R&B charts in 1960 and not only established her but also provided plenty of women singers with a song to spice up their repertoire in the years to come. Recorded in 1959 for Joe Ruffino and Ron Records in New Orleans, the song was written by Dorothy LaBostrie, who wrote “Tutti Frutti” for Little Richard. Crescent City stalwarts Justin Adams, Robert Parker, and Eddie Bo played in the session.  The song has been recorded also known by its opening line, “You Can Have My Husband.”

B.B. King: “Why I Sing The Blues” (ABC BluesWay, 1969)

Under the production of Bill Szymczyk, B.B. King updated his blues in both style and subject matter on his March 5, 1969, rendering of “Why I Sing the Blues.”  In the pulsating performance, propelled by Gerry Jemmott’s bass, King traced the blues and African-American life back to slave ships and up through ghetto conditions and welfare. Dave Clark, better known for his promotional work with Malaco and other labels but a veteran journalist and songwriter as well, contributed to the opus as co-writer. The New York session band consisted of Jemmott, Paul Harris (piano), Hugh McCracken (rhythm guitar), and Herbie Lovelle (drums). King had recorded an unreleased version in Chicago in 1968 and did a different song with the same title in Los Angeles in 1956. His ABC BluesWay single spent 14 weeks on the “Billboard” R&B charts (15 on “Cash Box”) and generated some crossover pop action as well. The version of King’s “Live & Well” was five minutes longer than the three-and-a-half-minute 45 and featured additional verses and guitar solos by an inspired king of the blues.

Blind Lemon Jefferson: “See That My Grave’s Kept Clean” (Paramount, 1927)

Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded  “See That My Grave’s Kept Clean” for Paramount in Chicago in 1928, following up an earlier version that was issued under a religious pseudonym, Deacon L.J. Bates, 1927 “See That My Grave’s Kept Clean.” His moving performances affected both the secular and the sacred worlds for generations to come. Adding to the lyrical imagery of two white horses, a silver spade, and a golden chain, on one take the Texas blues master plucked a guitar string in imitation of a church bell.

Sometimes titled “One Kind Favor,” the song drew from an old folk spiritual and has been recorded by Bob Dylan, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Furry Lewis, Hank Williams Jr., B.B. King, the Grateful Dead, John Lee Hooker, Mavis Staples (who won a GRAMMY for her rendition), and many more.

In keeping with the favor Jefferson asked in the song, his grave is kept clean in Wortham, Texas. The first verse is engraved on his headstone and the graveyard is now known as Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery. B.B. King felt so connected to the song that, per his wishes, his casket was drawn by two white horses.

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