The Blues - Legends, Songs and Styles Quiz

Answer: Bessie Smith

Bessie was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1894 and died in a car crash in Mississippi in 1937.

Ma Rainey was performing in minstrel and vaudeville shows in the earliest years of the 20th Century. Although her repertoire contained large elements of minstrel and pop music of the era, the blues was her forte, enough to be dubbed the "Mother of the Blues". In 1912, Bessie joined the troupe Rainey was performing with and Ma took her under her wing. The depth and power of her singing was unequaled at the time and by 1920, she had surpassed Rainey as a star and had her own show in Atlantic City. Her first recording in 1923 was "Downhearted Blues" and it was an immediate smash hit, Number One on the charts, unprecedented for a "race" record. During the 1920s, she would have a total of 15 songs achieve pop chart status (top 20). All her hits were blues oriented although some did have elements of jazz thrown into the mix especially some of her collaborations with jazzmen like Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong. By 1930, with the onset of the depression, the recording industry suffered a deep swoon and blues artists were particularly hit hard. She recorded sparingly thereafter but continued to star in live performances, particularly in Harlem at the Apollo Theatre, before she met her tragic end.

Among your other choices, Koko Taylor, the reigning "Queen of the Chicago Blues" didn't get into the business until the mid 1950s. Ethel Waters also started her career in the early 1920s as a blues singer but by the middle of the decade she was definitely in the jazz camp although her songs did have blues tinges to them. Her most popular hit was "Stormy Weather", a Number One jazz classic in 1933. Billie Holiday, "Lady Day", didn't begin her career until the early 1930s so she didn't figure as the answer to this question. Also more of a jazz singer, it's a toss-up as to who was the greater female singer of the genre - her or Ella Fitzgerald.

One may ask why female singers paved the way in recording the blues when males dominated the genre in every other respect. Blues historians suggest two reasons. First, recording executives recognized that the blues was not your typical parlor music. Maybe you could get away with recording jazz as dance music but the earthy themes inherent in blues music, especially sung in the gruff manner popular with male bluesmen of the time, would not sell to the general public. Probably, they were right. The female voice softened the sound. Second, the noted blues giants of the day such as Son House and Charley Patton were vagabonds and traveled the dusty roads eking out a living. Finding them would be a huge task to begin with then... refer to point one! The men would have their day when the blues became more accepted, by the mid to late 1930s.

Answer: He died of pneumonia

Robert Johnson - a tormented soul with hellhounds on his trail, making pacts with the devil, as sure a candidate for doing himself in as ever walked the planet. Sorry, no dice! A notorious womanizer and a man with a prodigious appetite for liquor. Well, he never got the chance to die in an alcoholic stupor and he wasn't shot to death, but it is believed that his casual way with women may have led to his demise.

He was playing a juke joint in Three Forks, Mississippi with Sonny Boy Williamson (II) and Honeyboy Edwards. At some point in the evening he took a giant swig out of a whiskey jug given to him and a short time later, was convulsing on the floor and frothing at the mouth. The liquor was apparently laced with poison or lye, spiked either by the jealous husband of a woman he made advances to or by another woman whom he had spurned. Whatever, he was spirited to a rooming house in nearby Greenwood and although he seemed to sweat out whatever poisoned his system, he eventually succumbed to the pneumonia the fever had induced on August 16, 1938.

The most famous "legend" pertaining to Johnson was that of selling his soul to the devil. In the beginning, Johnson would sit at the foot of the great blues practitioners of the day, Son House and Charley Patton, absorbing all he could to become a better player. In an interview many years later, Son House noted that they would let him jam with them occasionally, that his harmonica playing was passable but his guitar playing was awful. They lost track of him for a year or so but when they met again and jammed, their jaws dropped! He was doing things with the guitar they had never conceived of and quipped that he had to make a deal with the devil to get so good so fast. Apparently, that sounded kind of cool to Johnson and he personally amplified the story by writing songs such as "Crossroads" where he describes his meeting with the devil at some dusty Mississippi junction and "Me And The Devil Blues" which outlined the pact. Actually, another great blues guitar player of the era, Tommy Johnson, used to tell the same story well before Robert Johnson and it's more than likely that the latter simply took the plot for his own. What probably made him great was practice and genius, not some sinister plot with Satan. It's this lore that makes the blues so much fun to research.

Answer: Honey Hush

"Honey Hush" was Big Joe Turner's Number One R&B hit from 1953 which he later re-recorded in 1959 for a Number 53 hit on the Hot 100. The others were definitive Muddy Waters classics.

Muddy Waters (nee: McKinley Morganfield) was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in 1915 and was another artist whose primary musical influence was the great Son House. He was a field hand on the Stovall's Plantation and like many others, dabbled in music in the evenings and on weekends. He gained local notoriety quickly but was "discovered" by the famous musicologist Alan Lomax who stumbled across him in 1941 while on a field trip recording "roots" artists for the Library of Congress. He recorded a couple of tracks of Morganfield on his portable recorder (a 300 pound monstrosity) and must have liked what he heard. He returned a year later to do several more recordings with him solo and of a band he played with, the Sons Simms Four.

The interest of Lomax must have given Morganfield pause for thought. Following a disagreement with his "bossman" on the plantation, he packed up for Chicago in 1943, became Muddy Waters and decided to make his living playing the slide guitar and singing while doing more menial tasks, such as delivering venetian blinds, as a day job. His first recording gig, as a sideman, occurred in 1947 but by 1951 he assembled a band that included such talented musicians as harmonica player Little Walter and started recording his own hits. The introduction of pianist Otis Spann in 1953 was the final key to the puzzle. His group was the hottest blues band in the country for the next 15 years or so. By the late 1960s, younger blues oriented groups like The Rolling Stones (who took their name from the Waters' title in the quiz) usurped his position, largely by selling more records and appealing more to white rock & roll patrons. Hardly deterred, Waters still recorded some excellent blues albums from 1970 onward and continuously toured the globe to admiring audiences. By the time of his death in 1983, he was arguably the greatest blues musician of the 1900s, give or take one Robert Johnson.

Answer: Ain't Nothing You Can Do

"Ain't Nothing You Can Do" was a Number 20 Billboard Hot 100 hit for Bobby "Blues" Bland, an artist of the Electric Texas Blues style and another who was elected to the R&R Hall of Fame. He was inducted a year after Reed in 1992. Among Jimmy Reed's other notable hits were "Baby What You Want Me To Do", "Bright Lights, Big City" and "Honest I Do".

Reed sang the blues in about as lean and simple a way as one could imagine. No embellishments were necessary for him to get the message across. Most of his recordings found him playing the guitar and harmonica accompanied only by a drummer, bass man and his childhood friend and mentor, guitarist Eddie Taylor... no piano, no horns. He was among my favorite blues artists and perhaps it was this Spartan approach that I admired.

Reed was born on a plantation near Dunleith, Mississippi in 1925 and it was Taylor, his senior by two years, who taught him the rudiments of blues guitar and mouth organ. He first relocated to the Chicago area in 1940 and finally settled there for good in the late 1940s after a stint in the Navy. Working in a meat packing plant by day and the clubs as a sideman at night, he reunited with Taylor and began his recording career in the early 1950s. They stayed together right to Reed's death in 1976.

If there was one thing that Reed could do better than sing, play and compose blues songs, it might have been drinking - morning, noon and night, especially on the road. His ability to perform while stone, cold drunk amazed his peers and he spent more than a few nights in the drunk tank. He developed epilepsy around 1957 and it went undiagnosed for several years, his convulsions attributed to the DTs. By the early 1960s he was such a mess that in recording sessions, Taylor would have to play in front of him and cue him when to change chords or to do a solo with the harmonica. Similarly, Reed's wife would also be present at these sessions. She would sit on a stool close by to Reed and whisper the lyrics in his ear, one line at a time, often joining in ever so softly to keep him on beat. One can actually hear her helpful interventions on a couple of his big hits like "Big Boss Man" and Bright Lights, Big City". Obviously, recording new material was becoming more and more problematical as the decade advanced. Somehow, he managed to maintain a regular touring regimen but his star was clearly in descent. By the middle of the 1970s, his epilepsy was finally diagnosed and being treated. He also quit drinking but the years of illness and alcoholism had already taken its toll. He was attempting a comeback on the blues festival circuit when he passed away at the age of 50.

Answer: Mississippi John Hurt

In 1963, a young blues singer and musicologist from Washington, D.C named Tom Hoskins happened upon one of those OKeh tracks laid down by Hurt, "Avalon Blues". Intrigued by Hurt's intricate guitar picking and low-keyed vocal style, he and a colleague, Mike Stewart, wondered if the old fellow was still around 35 years later. Contemporary maps didn't list Avalon, Mississippi but an old 1878 atlas did. Off they went, asked about his whereabouts at a local filling station and amazingly enough, Hurt resided less than a mile away. Still at the top of his form vocally and as an instrumentalist, the boys recorded a few songs on a tape player, returned home and announced their discovery. Hurt was asked to come to Washington and with a vast repertoire of songs few people had ever heard before, he became the toast of the town. His performance at the Newport Blues Festival that year was an absolute revelation and he spent the next three years recording his material and performing nonstop at various blues festivals throughout the northeast. He died in 1966 a happy man, one of the greatest acoustic bluesmen ever.

What about those other guys? John T. "Funny Papa" Smith (ca. 1890 - ca. 1940) was one of the seminal influences in the development of acoustic Texas blues in the 1920s and 1930s. He only recorded 22 tracks and is mostly forgotten today but one of his songs, "Howling Wolf Blues", was utilized as the stage moniker for one of the blues greats decades later; Chester "Howlin' Wolf" Burnett. A traveling minstrel who toured Texas from the Louisiana border to the Panhandle, "Funny Papa" was convicted of killing a man over a gambling debt in the mid-1930s and died in prison around 1940.

"Sleepy" John Estes (1899-1977) was a native Tennessean and sang in the Piedmont style. As the foreman of a railroad maintenance crew in the 1920s, he would sing out orders to his men much like they once did on the chain gangs. He started singing professionally in the late 1920s and recorded his songs from 1929 until the mid-1970s. Very emotive in his delivery, Big Bill Broonzy observed that he was "crying the blues". One of his more famous numbers, "Drop Down Mama", has been covered by many artists ranging from Fred McDowell to David Crosby.

Walter "Brownie" McGhee (1915-1996) was another proponent of the Piedmont blues. Starting in 1941, he was constantly partnered with mouth harpist Sonny Terry and recorded countless songs together. More versatile than many blues artists, he spent three years on Broadway in the 1955 production of "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" and toured the world many times with Terry as ambassadors of the blues. After close to 35 years together, they finally split up in the mid-1970s not even on speaking terms. He performed on records and at festivals right to the end of his days before succumbing to stomach cancer.

Answer: Louis Jordan

It was Louis Jordan who recorded all those hits and he was "THE MAN" when it came to the jump blues. All the artists listed were advocates of a genre that, without doubt, served as the bridge between "jazz/blues" and "rock and roll". If you don't already have them within your music collection, try to give them a listen and form your own opinion.

Born in Arkansas in 1908 and the son of a musician, Jordan took up the sax early, attended Arkansas Baptist College as a music major, played in various minstrel bands in the area then moved to Philadelphia with his family in 1932. By 1936, he had joined Chick Webb's band and probably played on the band's famous recording of "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" featuring Ella Fitzgerald in 1938. In 1939, he formed the Tympany Five who backed him up on all his famous 1940s recordings. He dominated the new "Black" charts of the day and held all the chart records for number of entries, Number Ones, weeks on the chart, etc. for over 20 years until artists like James Brown and Aretha Franklin came on the scene. One would have thought that he could have easily segued into rock & roll when it became popular in the mid-1950s but it never came to pass. Perhaps his music was a little too "jazzy" for the white R&R crowd that drove the market. He continued to record and tour until silenced by a heart attack in 1975.

Wynonie Harris was born in Omaha in 1915 and was a famous blues "shouter" who fronted Lucky Millinder's band as vocalist during the 1940s. His most famous hit was 1948's "Good Rockin' Tonight" and he remained a major R&B charting influence until 1952 when he inexplicably lost the favor of the record buying public. His descent was so rapid that he spent the rest of his life singing in seedy blues bars for a pittance. He died in 1969 at the age of 53 from throat cancer.

Oklahoma native Joe Liggins was born in 1915 and achieved brief stardom with two big hits; "The Honeydripper" topped the R&B charts for 17 weeks in 1945 and "Pink Champagne" nearly did as well in 1950 running at Number One on that chart for 11 weeks. They peaked at Number 13 and Number 30, respectively on Billboard's Bestseller chart. Although he never again starred under the bright lights, the pianist/vocalist fronted a small combo and lived comfortably until his passing in 1987.

Amos Milburn, born in Houston in 1927, was a boogie piano master and had a number of R&B hits during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Actually, he and his band produced many searing boogie numbers that should have charted but unaccountably, did not. His most notable recordings were "Chicken Shack Boogie" in 1948, "Bad, Bad Whiskey" in 1950 and its counterpoint, "Good, Good Whiskey" in 1954. Regrettably, it was Milburn's fondness for drink which may have ultimately proved his undoing. A series of strokes brought on by his lifestyle eventually led to his demise in 1980 at the age of 52.

Answer: Tipitina

Professor Longhair (born Henry Byrd in 1918) has been rightfully regarded as the founding father of New Orleans R&B, followed by such luminaries as Fats Domino, Lloyd Price and Ivory Joe Hunter. He grew up as a tap-dancing street busker then turned to gambling to earn a livelihood before taking up music seriously in the late 1940s developing his Caribbean influenced "rhumba boogie" style of piano playing. His earliest recording sessions produced his biggest hits like "Bald Head", "Tipitina" and "Mardi Gras In New Orleans" and he was a mainstay lounge act in the city for a couple of decades. He fell upon hard times in the early 1960s, reduced to a janitor in a music store, before bouncing back in the 1970s. He died in 1980.

As noted, Slim Harpo grew up in the Baton Rouge area. Both a guitar player and mouth harp player like Jimmy Reed, he played in much the same laid back style but with the swamp country influences readily apparent in his delivery. Oddly, despite that, he found favor with the rock and roll crowd and two of his biggest R&B hits "Rainin' In My Heart" and "Baby Scratch My Back" made headway on the Hot 100 charts peaking at Number 34 and Number 16 in 1961 and 1966 respectively. He had quite a following in Britain and the rest of Europe and was just weeks away from touring there for the first time when he was felled by a heart attack in 1970 at the age of 46.

Answer: Hellhound On My Trail

"Hellhound On My Trail" was a composition of Robert Johnson.

Leadbelly was born in 1888 in Mooringsport, Louisiana not far from the Texas border. It seems that he had a natural musical gift and was performing before he reached his teens, sponging up all the field hollers, minstrel songs, spirituals and early roots blues music that he could. However, in his own words, "He was an awfully bad boy". At the age of 15, he fathered an illegitimate child and when the same girl became pregnant again a short time later, the wrath of the residents drove him from the community into even more trouble. Guitar over his shoulder, he headed for Shreveport's notoriously tough red light district enticed by the music and the women. Eventually, he drifted to Dallas, Texas playing saloons and bawdy houses while working the cotton fields in season. His first brush with the law there occurred after he assaulted a woman who spurned his advances. Sentenced to a year in prison, he escaped three days later. Then in 1917, he shot a fellow in a dispute over another woman and garnered a 30 year sentence. With time, he became a model prisoner and regularly entertained the guards and fellow inmates with his music. Texas Governor Pat Neff and his wife heard one of his performances and just before he left office in 1925, granted Leadbelly a full pardon.

It wasn't long before he was back in jail again. In 1930, he was convicted of attempted murder, slicing up several fellows with a knife who attempted to steal a whiskey jar from his lunch bucket while he was working the fields. Sentenced to 30 years in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison, it was there that he first encountered John Lomax, the noted musicologist for the Library of Congress. Lomax and his son and colleague, Alan, were literally blown away by the depth of knowledge Leadbelly had regarding folk-blues and the talent he had in delivering the songs with his trademark 12-string guitar. Guided on one hand by the desire to capture as many of the songs Leadbelly knew on disc and on the other by the wealth they reckoned they could accumulate managing his career, they set about to secure his release. They took a recording with them to Louisiana Governor O.K. Allen. On one side was Leadbelly's rendition of "Goodnight Irene", on the other a singing petition requesting his pardon. Again, it made an impression. Pardon was granted in 1934 and under the auspices of the Lomax family, for whom he also served as valet and driver, Leadbelly began his recording and concert career.

The collaboration between Lomax and Leadbelly was short lived. After he recorded dozens of albums for the Library of Congress, they parted ways amicably in 1935. Lomax erred in the assumption that Leadbelly would be a hot commodity. His recordings and concerts were virtually ignored by the black people who had new heroes named Satchmo, Ellington and Basie. He did find some favor among the Caucasian elite, particularly in his adopted home of New York City, at least enough to make a comfortable living. His death in 1949 at the age of 61 was most untimely. The Weavers cover of "Goodnight Irene" in 1950 became a massive Number One hit in 1950 and the resultant revival of roots music would have surely elevated Leadbelly into certain stardom. Lonny Donegan and his skiffle band had a big hit with "Rock Island Line" in 1956 and a number of performers have recorded "Midnight Special", most notably Johnny Rivers in 1965. Among the covers of Leadbelly songs that charted with distinction for others were "Cotton Fields" by the Highwaymen in 1961 and "C.C. Rider" by Chuck Willis in 1957 and The Animals in 1966. Although he never really profited much from his recordings, the world of blues and folk music owes much to this legendary performer.

Answer: Gus Cannon

Gus Cannon was a noted jug band leader in 1920s and 1930s Memphis. Among the first to record jug band music, it served as a bridge to the blues from more traditional minstrel and Appalachian folk music. Active until his death in 1979 at the age of 94, he gained belated fame as the composer of "Walk Right In" when The Rooftop Singers covered it and took it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963.

What is the difference between Cajun music and Zydeco one might ask? I did one evening while in New Orleans at a Cajun dance hall. I was informed that Cajun music owes its roots to the Acadians who settled in rural Louisiana following their expulsion from Nova Scotia in 1755. It was French based fiddle music but evolved into a unique musical form when it came under the influence of black Creoles and Haitian immigrants in the 1800s. African and Caribbean rhythms were stirred into the mix but the music still emphasized the melody rather than the back beat. Poor blacks didn't have access to fiddles and other instruments. They devised their own style of Cajun music using washboards, triangles and the tub bass with an emphasis on the beat. Eventually, with the advent of the accordion which replaced the fiddle, the rudiments of Zydeco music were in place but it was Clifton Chenier that gave it definition.

Chenier was born in Opelousas just north of Lafayette, Louisiana in 1925 and came from a musical family. One of the trademarks of Zydeco music is the "frottoir" or "Rub-Board". It's the instrument that players wear on their chest and strum like a washboard. Chenier invented it in 1946, popularized it and made more for other musicians to use. With it, a new style of music was born, one that he called Zydeco. At first just a regional musical style, it slowly developed national and international recognition largely due to Chenier's perseverance. When he won a Grammy in 1983, Zydeco had truly arrived.

Al Rapone has been playing the blues since the 1950s. In the early 1970s, with his sister Queen Ida aboard as vocalist, he formed a Zydeco band and has been actively recording and touring ever since. Rockin' Sydney also started out as a traditional blues artist in the late 1950s but switched to Zydeco in the early 1980s following Chenier's success. He is credited with recording the first Zydeco gold record in 1984. His "My Toot Toot" sold over a million copies internationally that year although it failed to make an impression on Billboard's Hot 100 or R&B charts and only peaked at Number 19 on the Country chart. Selling a million copies of a record without significant chart action is quite an achievement indeed.

Answer: B.B. King

Buddy Guy, a fixture on the Chicago blues scene since the late 1950s, was born in 1936. The late James Brown, born in 1928, was dubbed the "Godfather of Soul Music" and is not considered a bluesman. John Hammond,Jr., born in 1942, was one of the few white blues musicians to achieve greatness in a genre historically dominated by blacks.

Riley King was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi and his musical roots were typical of the region - Gospel, country and the blues. He initially relocated to Memphis in 1946 where, under the tutelage of his cousin Bukka White, a noted blues musician in his own right, he learned some of the finer elements of playing the electric guitar. After a brief respite back home, he returned to Memphis in 1948 and took Beale St. by storm. The star of his own local radio show within a year, he was given the moniker "Beale St. Blues Boy". It was soon contracted to "Blues Boy" then simply "B.B.". He cut his first recordings in 1949 and had his first Billboard R&B chart entry in 1951 with the Number One "3 O'Clock Blues". No bluesman has had more R&B charting entries with over 70 to his credit.

More than his singing, King's inventiveness with the guitar has made him the legend he is. One winter in the early 1950s, he had a gig at a little juke joint in Twist, Arkansas. The place was heated by a kerosene-filled garbage can in the middle of the room and during a break when King was outside, two fellows got into a brawl over a woman and tipped over the garbage can during the melee. Immediately the hall was engulfed in flames and King's treasured guitar was still inside. Foolishly perhaps, he risked life and limb rushing in to rescue it. He later learned that the object of the combatant's furor was named Lucille. Thereafter, all his guitars have been so named.

Still alive and active as this is being written in 2009, King has a reputation for being a gracious and generous man and has been awarded more honors than can be listed on this page. More than anyone else, he has been responsible for elevating the blues into the mainstream of music and it'll be a sad day for the blues and for music in general when he leaves us for the big jam in the sky.

Answer: Singing The Blues

"Singing The Blues" was not a blues song at all. It was a Number One Billboard hit for Guy Mitchell, a pop crooner if ever there was one, in 1956.

Howlin' Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett) was born West Point, Mississippi in 1910 and like so many other bluesmen of the generation, worked as a farm laborer in his youth. His interest in music was piqued when he saw Charlie Patton in action and was fascinated by his showmanship and the forceful growl with which he belted out the blues. It was those elements that he incorporated into his own blues persona. Standing 6'3" and weighing close to 300 lbs., he was a physically intimidating presence on stage and his delivery amplified it. Subsequent to his split from Dixon, Wolf became an accomplished composer himself and several of his songs were appropriated by the blues oriented rock bands of the era like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Cream. By the 1970s, he was beset by heart problems and endured several small heart attacks which slowed him down considerably. While undergoing heart surgery, he slipped away on the operating table in 1976.

Meanwhile, Willie Dixon continued to be reckoning force on the blues scene for many years after his collaboration with Wolf ended. His association with Chess Records ceased when the label was sold in the late 1960s upon which he returned to the stage as the lead performer for the first time in his career and recorded several highly praised albums. However, it was his work behind the scenes for which he became more notable. For decades, blues artists and composers never received their just share of the royalties for their output. Clever accounting, negligence by the publishing companies, or outright theft deprived the real maker's of the music their financial due. Dixon, after years of spearheading litigation to amend these travesties, ultimately won the day and many bluesmen who were living in poverty avoided pauper's graves. For those efforts, along with his composing and performing work, he became one of the leading elder statesmen of the blues community in his later years. He passed away peacefully in 1992 at the age of 76 following a lengthy battle with diabetes.

Answer: John Lee Hooker

Lightnin' Slim was born in St. Louis in 1913 but became one of the pre-eminent disciples of the Louisiana school of blues. Pee Wee Crayton was born in Texas in 1914 but moved to L.A. in 1935 and became one of the founding fathers of the West Coast Style of blues. Otis Rush was a Philadelphia native born in 1934. He has plied his trade for many years on the Chicago blues circuit.

John Lee Hooker's first musical influence was church Gospel music. However, his step-father dabbled in the blues and was often visited by such formidable bluesmen as Charley Patton, Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Listening to the likes of those artists jamming in the kitchen resulted in Hooker getting hooked on blues.

In the 1930s and 1940s, making a living playing the blues was not that easy. Even the stars were not making much performing and recording records was a hit and miss proposition. Because of the Depression and later, the war effort, many record companies limited the number of sides a musician could record. The cost of recording and distribution dictated such an attitude. It might not have affected Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters or the name swing bands but it definitely impacted bluesmen. There was a way out and John Lee Hooker took it. He signed as many contracts as he could with as many record companies as he could and used as many pseudonyms as there were contracts. Even now, it's impossible to ascertain his exact discography. The labels he recorded for and the aliases he recorded under number in the dozens.

Despite his dearth of charting single recordings, Hooker was one of the few bluesmen to truly prosper over his career. Certainly the prolific recording of albums embellished his pocketbook but he was one of the first to capitalize on rock and roll artists utilizing his compositions. Benefitting to a large extent from the blues revival that occurred from the mid 1960s and thereafter, he was constantly in demand at blues festivals and the like. By the 1990s, he was living in semi-retired comfort on the west coast until his passing of natural causes in 2001 at the age of 83.

Answer: Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd can not be easily labeled but let's give it a try - they were a progressive psychedelic hard rock band. Nevertheless, compared to your other options, they were the obvious odd band out when weighing the influence the blues had on them.

Formed in California in the mid-1960s, Canned Heat took their name from a 1928 blues number written by Tommy Johnson, "Canned Heat Blues", which recounts the sad practice among the poor of drinking "Sterno" or "canned heat" when conventional alcohol was unavailable. The leading founding members of Canned Heat were Alan Wilson and Bob "The Bear" Hite. Both were avid blues historians and collectors of blues records and modeled their group accordingly. Lead singer Hite was a big man and naturally mimicked the stage presence of Howlin' Wolf when performing. Wilson was an accomplished harmonica and rhythm guitar player while the third principle member of the group, Henry Vestine, was as capable of blues licks on lead guitar as any person not named B.B. King, Buddy Guy or Stevie Ray Vaughan. One of the band's highlights was recording an album with John Lee Hooker, whom the group idolized. Their two biggest hits, "On The Road Again" and "Going Up The Country" were old blues songs they uncovered and up-dated for rock era sensibilities. Although the band still exists and tours regularly, all the principle players noted here have long since passed away.

Much like their contemporaries and rivals, The Rolling Stones, The Animals' roots were firmly planted in the blues. Their two biggest hits, "House Of The Rising Sun" and "See See Rider" were old traditional blues standards and another moderate hit, "Boom Boom", was a John Lee Hooker composition. With the departure of Alan Price and Eric Burdon in 1965 and 1969, the group expired except for a couple of short lived reunions in 1976 and 1983.

ZZ Top was formed in Houston in 1970 as a boogie based blues band. Perhaps they strayed from the formula in the mid-1980s with songs like "Legs" and "Sharp Dressed Man" (many fans felt that they sold out to commercialism at the time) but the shadow of boogie blues still permeated those efforts. Their first hit, "La Grange", was based on a riff established by John Lee Hooker in "Boogie Chillen", and covers of Elmore James' "Dust My Broom" and Lowell Fulson's "Tramp" were clear indications of their bias to the blues. When Muddy Waters' birth home, really a wooden shack, was dismantled, remnants were distributed to worthy recipients with links to the blues and the band was given one of those pieces of wood. In turn, they converted it into a guitar they dubbed "Muddywood" and took it on an extended tour designed to make money on behalf of the construction of the Delta Blues Museum. They're a blues band all right!

Answer: Sonny Boy Williamson

If you chose Sonny Boy Williamson, you were right twice - there were two of them! The original "Sonny Boy" was born John Lee Williamson in Jackson, Tennessee in 1914, became a harmonica virtuoso in his teens and found his way to Chicago in 1934. It didn't take long for him to become the premier player in the region, backing-up many performers during recording sessions, they, in turn, reciprocating when Williamson was the lead man in the studio. He developed the "call-and-response" style of playing, alternating vocal lines with quick bursts on the harmonica, a technique copied by virtually every noted harpist/vocalist since. A personable and accommodating musician, he was quick to mentor any harpist who wished to develop his skills under his guidance. Unfortunately, while walking home from a gig one night, he was set on by thugs and died from head injuries endured in the attack. He was 34 and at the peak of his career.

The second "Sonny Boy" was actually Aleck Ford Miller, born in Glendora, Mississippi in 1899... or 1897... or 1909. He was the master of misinformation as the discrepancy in his birth date implies. During the early 1940s, he became the star of his own show on KFFA radio in Helena, Arkansas sponsored by the Interstate Grocery Co. The sponsor believed that they could sell more of their product if Miller would pose as the recording star Sonny Boy Williamson and he was more than happy to oblige. Since Williamson stayed in Chicago and never came south and Miller was happy in the south and was never intending to move north, the ruse actually worked! When Williamson tragically was killed in 1948, Miller became the original Sonny Boy to the public although his colleagues knew better. All that aside, Miller was every bit as talented as Williamson, if not more, and carved out an enduring niche for himself in the pantheon of blues harpists. He was one of the first bluesmen to tour Britain and Europe during the early 1960s and frequently played in concert with the Animals and other seminal British blues oriented rock bands. He died of a heart attack in 1965... of that there is no doubt.

Your other options as answers were all piano players. Otis Spann did some solo work in his time but was more noted as an accompanist to the great Muddy Waters' bands of the 1950s and 1960s. He turned his seat in the band over to Pinetop Perkins in 1969 intending to do more work as a soloist but was suddenly stricken with cancer and died in 1970 at the age of 40. Pinetop Perkins, born in 1913 in Belzoni, Mississippi, was a guitarist originally but switched to piano when he suffered extensive damage to the tendons in his left arm after being attacked by a knife wielding chorus girl in a Helena, Arkansas nightspot in the 1940s. As noted earlier, he worked with Muddy Waters throughout the 1970s but went out on his own in 1979 and has recorded a number of blues albums since then. In fact, Perkins received a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album for "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas" in 2008 at the age of 95. Has anyone older ever won a Grammy? Incidentally, he was not the author of the blues classic "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie". It was a 1928 composition of another great bluesman, Pinetop Smith. Finally, Oklahoma native Jay McShann got his start playing the blues in Kansas City in the early 1930s. By 1936, he gravitated to jazz and formed a big band which counted the immortal Charlie Parker among its members from 1937 to 1942. He maintained his Kansas City residence thereafter and vacillated between blues and jazz throughout his career. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 90.

Answer: Kid Valentine

Kid Valentine was a traditional Dixieland jazz institution. Always based in the New Orleans area, he formed his first band in the early 1920s and continued to lead one right up to his death in 1987 at the age of 91. A perennial fixture at Preservation Hall from the early 1960s onward, we had the good fortune to see him perform there in 1983. What an effervescent and charming man!

Robert Cray and Keb' Mo' are among today's most recognizable names in the world of blues. Cray was born in 1953 in Columbus, Georgia and as the son of a military man, moved frequently around the U.S. as a child. He formed his first blues band in 1974 backing up Albert Collins and achieved stardom on his own with a couple of blockbuster albums in the 1980s. One of his biggest hits, "Smoking Gun" in 1987, crossed over to the Hot 100 charts and peaked at Number 22. He also made a cameo appearance in "National Lampoon's Animal House" as the bass player in the fictional band Otis Taylor & the Knights. Keb' Mo', born Kevin Moore in L.A. in 1951, started playing professionally in an R&B band in 1972 that backed up Papa John Creach on tour. His first legitimate exposure to blues musicians occurred in the 1980s. Learning the nuances of the music during that decade, he became a full-fledged bluesman in the 1990s and has recorded many albums and performed at many blues venues since then.

Hans Theessink may be a name unfamiliar to many but this Dutch-born national may be the single most important blues figure to ever come out of continental Europe. Born in 1948, he was largely a self-taught guitarist and got hooked on the blues by hearing it on the radio. By the late 1960s he was performing at various coffee houses and clubs in the Netherlands and Germany. It was a trip to the Mecca of blues, the Mississippi Delta in 1979, which truly enhanced his knowledge of the music. Eager to learn at the feet of the masters, he incorporated many tricks of the trade into his own style. He's recorded several solid albums since the early 1980s and constantly tours Europe spreading the faith.

Here we are in the 21st Century and in a few years, we'll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the blues as a distinct musical entity. One can say that the blues formally came into being in 1912 when W.C. Handy's composition, "Memphis Blues", was published. Still basically a U.S. art form, we've recounted in this quiz how it developed a foothold in Britain thanks to John Mayall, Eric Clapton and many of the rock bands who embraced the music in the 1960s and 1970s. Now with Theessink's work in Europe, Dave Hole's in Australia and Colin James' and Sue Foley's in Canada, the genre's slowly expanding into new markets. Maybe it'll never reach the heights it achieved in its glory days but that's okay. For us aficionados, it'll remain our little secret!