Koko Taylor
Biographie Koko Taylor
Koko Taylor
Often called the "Queen of the Blues," Koko Taylor (nee Cora Walton) was born 75 years ago in a sharecropper's cabin at the edge of a cotton plantation in southwestern Tennessee. Even though her father encouraged her to perform only gospel music, Koko and her siblings would sneak out and play the blues on homemade instruments, including a guitar made with baling wire and a fife fashioned from a corncob. When she was eighteen, Koko (given that name as a child due to her love of chocolate) moved with her soon-to-be husband Robert "Pop" Taylor to Chicago. It was not long before she was sitting in with legendary blues musicians in Chicago's lively club scene. In 1962 Willie Dixon recognized her talent and procured for her a Chess recording contract. She recorded the million selling hit "Wang Dang Doodle" in 1965.
Her vocal power and stage presence, drawing on such forbears as Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace, and Alberta Hunter, has carried her through four decades of recording and live performance. She has received 19 W.C. Handy Awards, more than any other female blues artist, and six of her last seven Alligator albums have been nominated for Grammy Awards. In 1993 Chicago Mayor Richard A. Daley honored Taylor with a "Legend of the Year Award" and declared "Koko Taylor Day" throughout Chicago. The Blues Foundation bestowed a Lifetime Achievement Award on her in 1999.
"Koko Taylor is a national treasure. She packs firepower a lot of youngsters only wish they had." —Chicago Tribune
"Koko Taylor is the blues...a growling goddess of down-and-dirty. Sheer, unstoppable shouting power, full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes. There are many kings of the blues but only one queen. Koko's voice is capable of pinning a listener to the back wall." — Boston Globe
"Raucous, gritty, good-time blues...Taylor belts out blues in a gravel voice with ferocious intensity. Foot-stomping music that's rough, raw and wonderfully upbeat." — People
Like the force of nature that she was, GRAMMY-winning Koko Taylor, the undisputed "Queen of the Blues," was in a league of her own. With her exuberant, deeply soulful, good-time style and her tough-as-nails band, she could be counted on to make the reluctant fans dance and the quiet ones jump for joy. When Taylor passed in June of 2009, the world lost a musical icon. "Koko Taylor," according to Rolling Stone, was "the greatest blues singer of her generation."
