Born in 1952 in New York City’s South Bronx, Hill emerged as a contemporary blues artist whose initial inspirations came from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, paths that led him onward to the recordings of B.B. King, Albert King and T-Bone Walker. He also witnessed Buddy Guy’s opening set for the Mothers Of Invention in Central Park. During the early 1970s he assembled Brown Sugar, a group that featured his brother Kevin on bass and sisters Kathy and Wynette supplying backing vocals. He later joined Dadahdoodahda alongside Vernon Reid, who would subsequently establish Living Color, and he participated in the Black Rock Coalition that Reid helped launch in 1985. In 1987 Hill formed the Blues Mob with Kevin, Tony Lewis and Doug Booth, while simultaneously working with Bluesland, an expanded iteration of Brown Sugar. Bluesland issued the track ‘Bluestime In America’ on the compilation The History Of Our Future. A Blues Mob demo—now featuring Fred McFarlane on keyboards in place of Booth—reached Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer, who signed the band in 1994. Their first album, Bloodlines, consisted chiefly of original material aside from Vernon Reid’s ‘Soldier’s Blues’. Hill’s incisive yet wry observations addressed the realities, perils and deficiencies of Black life in the United States. Additional releases appeared on Alligator, Singular and Ruf. Although presented within a rock framework, Hill and the Blues Mob’s sound remains firmly rooted in present-day blues.
