Big Joe Duskin

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, on February 10, 1921, Big Joe Duskin was the third youngest among eleven siblings. His father, Rev. Perry Duskin, a preacher who secured steady railroad employment, relocated the household to Cincinnati, where the youngster grew up near Union Terminal, the station where his father clocked in for work. Duskin first touched the piano at age seven while accompanying his father's gospel hymns in church, yet the blues performances of traveling musicians through Cincinnati soon captured his attention and redirected his path. During the bustling 1930s and 1940s, the Ohio River city offered abundant riverboat and railroad jobs that kept its streets lively.

As a teenager Duskin developed a deep passion for blues, absorbing the recordings and stage appearances of Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, and Pete Johnson. Rev. Perry Duskin occasionally discovered his son playing what he called the Devil's music and extracted a promise that Joe would abandon blues and boogie-woogie for as long as the elder Duskin remained alive. Although the pact was made when Rev. Duskin was nearing eighty, the preacher lived until 105, compelling young Joe to earn his living instead as a police officer and postal worker.

Local audiences already knew Duskin from his energetic performances, yet he did not enter a recording studio for any label until the late 1970s. In the early 1970s he resumed playing at festivals across the United States and Europe. His debut album, Cincinnati Stomp, appeared on Arhoolie Records in 1978. Additional releases followed on European labels throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while Big Joe Jumps Again! (2004) marked only his second outing for an American company. Throughout the 1990s he maintained an active touring schedule that included appearances at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Chicago Blues Festival.

Duskin died on May 6, 2007, yet his legacy continues through the Big Joe Duskin Music Education Foundation in Ohio. His recorded catalog includes the Arhoolie reissue of Cincinnati Stomp on compact disc, 1988's Don't Mess with the Boogie Man on Special Delivery Records, 1994's Blues Rendezvous on Back to Blues, 1997's Live at Dollar Bill's Saloon on Mirage Records, 1998's Down the Road a Piece on Wolf Records, and Live at Quai du Blues, issued by Austerlitz in 2004. His final studio album, Big Joe Jumps Again!, came out on the Memphis-based Yellow Dog Records label in 2004, the same year Cincinnati's mayor proclaimed July 31 "Big Joe Duskin Day" and presented him with a key to the city. Cut at Monfort Heights United Methodist Church, the sessions represented Duskin's first studio work in sixteen years and showcased longtime King Records sidemen Philip Paul on drums and bassist Ed Conley alongside rock guitarist Peter Frampton, who had settled in Cincinnati to be near his wife's family. Paul had backed Wynonie Harris on "Good Rockin' Tonight," a track some historians regard as the first rock record.