Koko Taylor
Koko Taylor
Koko Taylor, (September 28, 1928 – June 3, 2009), was a Chicago blues singer, popularly known as the "Queen of the Blues". She was known primarily for her rough, powerful vocals and traditional blues styling. Born Cora Walton in Shelby County, Tennessee, Taylor was the daughter of a sharecropper. She left Memphis for Chicago in 1952 with her husband, truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor. In the late 1950s, she began singing in Chicago blues clubs. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to bigger performances and her first recording contract. In 1965, Taylor was signed by Chess Records subsidiary Checker Records where she recorded " Wand Dang Doodle", a song written by Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf five years earlier. The record became a hit, reaching number four on the R&B charts and number 58 on the pop charts and selling a million copies. She recorded several versions of the song over the years, including a live rendition at the 1967 American Folk Blues Festival, with the harmonica player Little Walter and the guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Her subsequent recordings, both original songs and covers, did not achieve as much success on the charts.
National touring in the late 1960s and early 1970s improved her fan base, and she became accessible to a wider record-buying public when she signed with Alligator Records in 1975. She recorded nine albums for Alligator, 8 of which were Grammy-nominated, and came to dominate the female blues singer ranks, winning twenty-five W.C. Handy Awards (more than any other artist). After her recovery from a near-fatal car crash in 1989, the 1990s found Taylor in films such as Blues Brothers 2000 and Wild at Heart, and she opened a blues club in Chicago in 1994. (The club is now closed.)
In 2003, she appeared as a guest with Taj Mahal in an episode of the television series Arthur. In 2009, she performed with Umphrey's McGee at the band's New Year's Eve concert at the Auditorium Theater, in Chicago.
Taylor influenced Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, Janis Joplin, Shannon Curfman, and Susan Tedeschi.
In her later years, she performed over 70 concerts a year and resided just south of Chicago, in Country Club Hills, Illinois.
Taylor's final performance was at the Blues Music Awards, on May 7, 2009. She suffered complications from surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding on May 19, 2009, and died on June 3 of that year.
In 2023, Taylor's 1960s performance of "Wang Dang Doodle" was added to the United States National Recording Registry. A lengthy NPR profile "The Sounds Of America: 'Wang Dang Doodle'" including singer Bonnie Raitt, actor Dan Akroyd, and blues artist Shemekia Copeland aired in May 2023.
(Koko Taylor at 5th Annual Poconos Blues Festival 1996)