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Blues icon Koko Taylor dies
June 3, 2009 4:49 PM
Koko Taylor, the Grammy Award-winning "Queen of the Blues," died Wednesday afternoon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital of complications from surgery, according to Marc Lipkin of Alligator Records. She was 80.
Alligator reported on its Web site this afternoon that Taylor's final performance was on May 7 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards, where she sang her hit "Wang Dang Doodle" after receiving her award for Traditional Blues Female Artist Of The Year.
Survivors include Taylor's husband, Hays Harris; daughter Joyce Threatt; son-in-law Lee Threatt, grandchildren Lee, Jr. and Wendy, and three great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be announced.
The woman known as the Queen of the Blues had been playing 200 shows a year for decades. But that ended in October 2003 when she was struck down by a heart attack and slipped into a 28-day coma. Friends feared for her life. When she emerged from the hospital after four months, she had to re-learn how to walk. She didn't perform again until the spring of 2004. Born Cora Walton in 1935 (or 1928, depending on which biography you believe), she was orphaned by the time she was 11, and had to work the cotton fields to support herself. She came to Chicago in 1952 with her future husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor, to escape the plantation life and "look for work, start a new life, get married and have a family."
She had no intention of becoming a singer. But she was inspired by the blues songs of Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton at an early age, and had sung gospel in church.
When she came to Chicago, she was thrilled by the music she encountered in the South Side clubs, amplified and raucous, a harder incarnation of the back-porch brand of blues she had heard in the South. It was the heyday of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and "Pops" Taylor persuaded them to let Koko sing. "I closed my eyes and I got started," she said. "There were no other women on the scene."
But her big voice won her a following, and she was instantly accepted. Dixon in particular became a mentor, and persuaded her to record what would become her signature song, "Wang Dang Doodle," in the mid-'60s for Chess Records. Taylor was sheepish about the risqué subject matter because of her gospel background, but it soon came to define her feisty style.
-- Trevor Jensen and Greg Kot (Chicago Tribune)
June 3, 2009 4:49 PM
Koko Taylor, the Grammy Award-winning "Queen of the Blues," died Wednesday afternoon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital of complications from surgery, according to Marc Lipkin of Alligator Records. She was 80.Alligator reported on its Web site this afternoon that Taylor's final performance was on May 7 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards, where she sang her hit "Wang Dang Doodle" after receiving her award for Traditional Blues Female Artist Of The Year.
Survivors include Taylor's husband, Hays Harris; daughter Joyce Threatt; son-in-law Lee Threatt, grandchildren Lee, Jr. and Wendy, and three great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be announced.
The woman known as the Queen of the Blues had been playing 200 shows a year for decades. But that ended in October 2003 when she was struck down by a heart attack and slipped into a 28-day coma. Friends feared for her life. When she emerged from the hospital after four months, she had to re-learn how to walk. She didn't perform again until the spring of 2004. Born Cora Walton in 1935 (or 1928, depending on which biography you believe), she was orphaned by the time she was 11, and had to work the cotton fields to support herself. She came to Chicago in 1952 with her future husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor, to escape the plantation life and "look for work, start a new life, get married and have a family."
She had no intention of becoming a singer. But she was inspired by the blues songs of Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton at an early age, and had sung gospel in church.
When she came to Chicago, she was thrilled by the music she encountered in the South Side clubs, amplified and raucous, a harder incarnation of the back-porch brand of blues she had heard in the South. It was the heyday of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and "Pops" Taylor persuaded them to let Koko sing. "I closed my eyes and I got started," she said. "There were no other women on the scene."
But her big voice won her a following, and she was instantly accepted. Dixon in particular became a mentor, and persuaded her to record what would become her signature song, "Wang Dang Doodle," in the mid-'60s for Chess Records. Taylor was sheepish about the risqué subject matter because of her gospel background, but it soon came to define her feisty style.
-- Trevor Jensen and Greg Kot (Chicago Tribune)
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