GRAMMY Award-Winning Queen Of The Blues To Be Honored With New Greatest Hits Collection Available On LP And Digital
Koko Taylor was one of very few women who found success in the male-dominated blues world. She took her music from the tiny clubs of Chicago’s South Side to concert halls and major festivals all over the world. She shared stages with every major blues star, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy as well as rock and soul icons including Ray Charles, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
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Born Cora Walton on a sharecropper’s farm just outside Memphis, TN, on September 28, 1928, Koko fell in love with music at an early age. She was initially inspired by the music of Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith, and further energized by gospel music and by WDIA blues disc jockeys B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. She began belting the blues with her five brothers and sisters, accompanying themselves on their homemade instruments. In 1952, Koko and her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, traveled to Chicago with nothing but, in Koko’s words, “thirty-five cents and a box of Ritz Crackers.”
In Chicago, “Pops” worked for a packing company, and Koko cleaned houses. Together they frequented the city’s blues clubs. Encouraged by her husband, Koko began to sit in with the city’s top blues bands, and soon she was in demand as a guest artist. One evening in 1962 Koko was approached by famed composer/arranger Willie Dixon. Overwhelmed by Koko’s performance, Dixon landed Koko a Chess Records recording contract, where he produced her several singles, two albums and penned her million-selling 1965 hit Wang Dang Doodle, which would become one of Taylor’s signature songs.
After Chess Records was sold, Taylor found a home with Chicago’s Alligator Records, and in 1975 released the GRAMMY-nominated I Got What It Takes. She recorded eight more albums for Alligator between 1978 and 2007 and made numerous guest appearances on other artists’ albums and tribute recordings. Taylor appeared in the films Wild At Heart and Blues Brothers 2000. NPR’s All Things Considered featured her, as did CBS-TV’s Early Edition. She performed on Late Night With David Letterman, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, CBS-TV’s This Morning, and numerous regional and international television programs. She even appeared as herself (although animated as a bear), on the award-winning children’s television program, Arthur.
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Over the course of her 40-plus-year career, Taylor received every award the blues world has to offer. In 2004 she received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award, which is among the highest honors given to an American artist. She had previously received a “Chicago Legend Of The Year” Award when the city declared “Koko Taylor Day” throughout Chicago. In 1997, she was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame. A year later, Chicago Magazine named her “Chicagoan Of The Year” and, in 1999, Taylor received the Blues Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Taylor’s final studio album, 2007’s Old School, was nominated for a GRAMMY. In all, eight of her nine Alligator albums received GRAMMY nominations. She won a GRAMMY Award in 1984 for her guest appearance on the compilation album Blues Explosion on the Atlantic label.
Taylor died on June 3, 2009 in her hometown of Chicago. Just a month earlier, Taylor won her 29th Blues Music Award from the Blues Foundation, where she also delivered her final performance. Having received more Blues Music Awards than any other artist (male or female), the Blues Foundation re-named the award for Traditional Blues Female Artist “The Koko Taylor Award” in her honor.
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