Robin Rogers

Guitarist, singer, and harmonica ace Robin Rogers endured repeated hardships and unexpected turns throughout her life, which granted her an authentic claim to the blues through lived experience, yet her period of greatest solo visibility proved tragically brief. After running away as a teenager in the late ’60s, she survived by any means available, often sleeping in parks or abandoned vehicles while drifting through Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta, Georgia; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Coconut Grove, Florida. Authorities eventually apprehended her and sent her to reform school. Upon release at fifteen she resumed her unsettled existence and soon developed severe dependencies on drugs and alcohol. During this time she began singing, learned guitar on her own, and performed at house parties, street corners, and coffeehouses. In 1979 Rogers moved to South Florida, where she cut material for the Sal Soul label, and remained in Ft. Lauderdale for a decade before overcoming her addictions in 1989. The following year she relocated to North Carolina and met guitarist Tony Rogers, whom she married. The couple performed as an acoustic blues duo, with Rogers devoting increasing focus to her harmonica work. Producer and drummer Jim Brock discovered the pair and captured their debut album, Time for Myself, issued in 2001. Expanding to a full band that featured her husband on guitar, Rogers signed with 95 North and delivered Crazy Cryin’ Blues in 2004, again produced by Brock. She joined the Blind Pig Records roster in 2008, and her first release for the label, Treat Me Right, appeared later that year. Back in the Fire followed in 2010 and entered the Billboard blues album charts at number three, though Rogers received a diagnosis of inoperable liver cancer shortly before its release. She succumbed to the disease on December 17, 2010, at the age of fifty-five.