Koko Taylor

Known widely as "the Queen of Chicago blues" and at times as the leading voice across the genre itself, Koko Taylor sustained the lineage of assertive, full-throated female blues singers by channeling the essence of early icons including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thornton, and Memphis Minnie into later decades. Her gritty, unfiltered delivery aligned seamlessly with the confident, amplified direction blues took, and the enormous success of "Wang Dang Doodle" made clear that command of the style extended beyond male artists alone. After an active opening chapter at Chess, she devoted many years to Alligator, a major force in present-day blues, ultimately securing more W.C. Handy Awards than any other female performer on record and confirming her status as the foremost woman singing blues in her generation.

Born Cora Walton on September 28, 1928, on a sharecropper's farm near Memphis, Tennessee, she lost her mother in 1939 and joined her siblings in assisting their father with fieldwork; the nickname "Koko" arose from her fondness for chocolate. She first sang gospel at a neighborhood Baptist church, and she and her siblings later performed blues on homemade instruments after hearing the music broadcast on radio. In 1953 she married truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor and relocated with him to Chicago in search of employment; once settled on the South Side, Pops took a job at a slaughterhouse while she worked as a housemaid. The couple performed blues numbers together in the evenings and visited the lively South Side clubs when time allowed; Pops urged her to join bands onstage, where her singing—drawing from classic female blues shouters as well as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf—quickly attracted attention. In 1962 she encountered Chess Records songwriter, producer, and bassist Willie Dixon, who, impressed by her stage presence, brought her into his circle. He oversaw her 1963 debut single "Honky Tonky" for the small USA label and then arranged a contract with Chess.

She entered the Chess studio in 1964 and achieved major success the next year with Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle," which moved over a million copies and reached number four on the R&B charts. The track remained her defining number thereafter and marked the final Chess single to enter the R&B Top Ten. Calls for her live performances surged even though later releases sold less strongly, and as blues listeners began shifting from Black to white audiences, the still-new Taylor became one of the earliest Chicago artists to draw crowds on the city's North Side, which was largely white at the time. Eventually she and her husband left their daytime jobs, with him serving as manager; she also assembled a backing group called the Blues Machine. The appearance of two albums—1969's Koko Taylor, which collected several earlier singles, and 1972's Basic Soul—allowed her live engagements to extend well beyond Chicago, and her set at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival produced a live recording on Atlantic that introduced her to listeners nationwide.

As the 1970s opened, Chess Records encountered deepening financial trouble and folded in 1975. Taylor joined the then-emerging Chicago label Alligator, which expanded over time into one of the nation's leading blues imprints. Her Alligator debut, I Got What It Takes, arrived in 1975 and earned critical praise along with her first Grammy nomination. The 1978 follow-up The Earthshaker included several numbers that became fixtures in her concerts, among them "I'm a Woman" and "Hey Bartender," while her standing on the blues circuit continued to rise despite the music's shrinking commercial reach. In 1980 she claimed the first of a remarkable run of W.C. Handy Awards for Best Contemporary Female Artist and, over the subsequent two decades, captured at least one such honor nearly every year except 1989, 1997, and 1998. From the Heart of a Woman appeared in 1981, and in 1984 she received her initial Grammy for her contribution to the various-artists Atlantic set Blues Explosion, which took Best Traditional Blues Album. She followed with the star-studded Queen of the Blues in 1985, securing additional Handy Awards for Vocalist of the Year and Entertainer of the Year without the "female" designation. In 1987 she issued her first domestic live recording, An Audience with the Queen.

Disaster arrived in 1988 when a van crash on tour left her with a broken shoulder, collarbone, and multiple ribs, while her husband suffered cardiac arrest; although Pops recovered temporarily, his condition remained impaired until his death months later. After recovering, she returned to the stage at the annual Chicago Blues Festival, then released Jump for Joy in 1990 and made a brief appearance in David Lynch's characteristically unconventional film Wild at Heart. She continued in 1993 with the fittingly named Force of Nature before taking a seven-year break from recording; during that interval she remarried and maintained an active touring schedule, preserving the prominence she had built through her 1980s work as the living embodiment of the blues queen. She resurfaced in 2000 with Royal Blue, which showcased an array of guests such as B.B. King, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Johnnie Johnson, and Keb' Mo'. Further health concerns prompted another seven-year pause before Old School appeared in 2007. Koko Taylor passed away in Chicago during June 2009 from complications following surgery to address gastrointestinal bleeding; she was 80.