Tommy Ridgley

Tommy Ridgley stood at the center of New Orleans R&B from the moment the style ignited and stayed deeply embedded in that same local circuit right up to his passing in 1999. Decades of fronting bands never dulled his delivery, a vitality fully on display in the 1995 Black Top release Since the Blues Began, which stands among his most energetic recordings.

He first entered the studio in 1949, cutting his initial tracks for Imperial under Dave Bartholomew’s supervision. Those sides—“Shrewsbury Blues” and “Boogie Woogie Mama”—remained local affairs and never traveled beyond the city. Further dates followed for Decca in 1950 and Imperial again in 1952, the latter yielding the frenetic “Looped.” Between 1953 and 1955 he cut four sessions for Atlantic; one of them produced the hard-charging instrumental “Jam Up,” which featured no contribution from Ridgley himself yet appeared under his name and moved a respectable number of copies, thanks in large part to tenor saxophonist Lee Allen.

By the late 1950s he had moved to Herald Records in New York, where he recorded “When I Meet My Girl” in 1957 and followed it with the buoyant “Baby Do-Liddle.” He next joined the New Orleans-based Ric roster and, in 1960, delivered the memorable mid-tempo “Let’s Try and Talk It Over” along with the blues-inflected “Should I Ever Love Again.” Opportunities thinned after he left Ric in 1963, though he resurfaced occasionally, including the soulful “I’m Not the Same Person” issued on Ronn in 1969.

Even when sessions grew infrequent he remained a steadfast local favorite. Since the Blues Began ranked among the strongest releases of 1995, its sound both up-to-date and unmistakably rooted in Crescent City R&B traditions. Shortly after the arrival of How Long in 1999, Ridgley died on August 11 of that year.