Grammy Winning Blues Singer Has Died

Singer Winner Record label says Koko Taylor is dead..

by Associated Press

Published: Wed, June 03, 2009 - 3:55 pm CST Last Updated: Wed, June 03, 2009 - 4:00 pm CST

CHICAGO (AP) - Record label: Grammy-winning blues singer Koko
Taylor dies in Chicago at age 80.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Career
Born in Shelby County, Tennessee, Taylor left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois in 1954 with her husband, truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor. In the late 1950s she began singing in Chicago blues clubs. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to wider performances and her first recording contract. In 1965, Taylor was signed by Chess Records, for which her single "Wang Dang Doodle" (written by Dixon, and a hit for Howlin' Wolf five years earlier) became a major hit, reaching number four on the R&B charts in 1966, and selling a million copies. Taylor has recorded many versions of this Dixon-penned song over the past few decades and has added more material, both original and covers, but has never repeated that initial chart success.

National touring in the late 1960s and early 1970s improved her fan base, and she became accessible to a wider record-buying public when she signed with Alligator Records in 1975. She has since recorded over a dozen albums for that label, many nominated for Grammy Awards, and come to dominate the female blues singer ranks, winning twenty five W. C. Handy Awards (more than any other artist). After her recovery from a near-fatal car crash in 1989, the 1990s found Taylor in films such as Blues Brothers 2000, and she opened a blues club on Division St. in Chicago in 1994, but it closed in 1999.

Taylor has influenced musicians such as Bonnie Raitt, Shemekia Copeland, Janis Joplin, Shannon Curfman, and Susan Tedeschi. She currently performs over 70 concerts a year and resides just south of Chicago in Country Club Hills, Illinois.

In 2008, the Internal Revenue Service said that Taylor had to pay $400,000 in back taxes, penalties and interest. Her tax problems concerned 1998, 2000 and 2001; for those years combined, her adjusted gross income was $949,000.[

WKRG.com » News Stream » National