Popa Chubby

Born Ted Horowitz in New York’s Bronx borough to the proprietor of a candy store, Popa Chubby first picked up drums at thirteen. Soon afterward the Rolling Stones ignited his interest in guitar. Although his formative years unfolded during the 1970s, he modeled his approach on earlier figures such as Sly & the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton. By his early twenties he had immersed himself in blues yet still found time to support punk poet Richard Hell. His initial major opportunity arrived when he captured first place in a nationwide blues talent contest staged by Long Beach, California’s public station KLON; the victory earned him the New Artist of the Year title and a slot opening the Long Beach Blues Festival in 1992.

Throughout the ensuing decade Chubby logged more than two hundred club performances annually. His Sony/OKeh debut, Booty and the Beast, was helmed by veteran Atlantic engineer and producer Tom Dowd, whose work with Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Wilson Pickett remains legendary. Prior to that major-label bow he had issued the Laughing Bear recordings It’s Chubby Time and Gas Money; the Sony/OKeh contract materialized in 1995. A live set, Hit the High Hard One, surfaced on the 1 (800) PrimeCD imprint in 1996. Lightyear Records then released One Million Broken Guitars in 1998, followed by Brooklyn Basement Blues the next year. Signing with Blind Pig in 2000, Chubby delivered How’d a White Boy Get the Blues? in 2001, an outing that folded in traces of contemporary pop and hip-hop. The 2002 album The Good, the Bad and the Chubby reflected sharpened songwriting and featured the September 11 commentary “Somebody Let the Devil Out.” Blind Pig compiled earlier material as The Hungry Years in 2003. Disturbed by the Iraq conflict, Chubby offered his most overtly political statement, Peace, Love and Respect, the following year.

Blind Pig gathered two previously France-only concert documents, Live at FIP and Wild Live!, into the 2005 anthology Big Man Big Guitar. A fresh studio effort, Stealing the Devil’s Guitar, appeared in 2006, the same year Dixie Frog unveiled the double-disc Electric Chubbyland, a collection of Jimi Hendrix interpretations later split into separate volumes by Blind Pig in 2007. Chubby explored country-punk on 2008’s Vicious Country for Dixie Frog, then returned to blues-rock with The Fight Is On in 2010. He moved to Provogue for Back to New York City in 2011. Universal Breakdown Blues arrived in 2013, spotlighting his rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” In 2016 he issued his sixteenth studio album, the aggressive Catfish, and followed it in 2017 with the rock- and soul-inflected Two Dogs.