Luther Allison | Artist
Luther Sylvester Allison was an American electric blues singer-songwriter and guitarist born 1939 in Widener, Arkansas. Allison was a distinctive Chicago blues guitar stylist who expatriated to France in the '70s and returned to the USA to great acclaim in the '90s. The fourteenth of 15 children, Allison's family moved to Chicago when he was 12, in search of better opportunities. Several of Allison's siblings sang in a gospel group called the Southern Travellers. One of his older brothers, Ollie, soon began working as a guitarist on Chicago's booming South Side blues scene. Seeking to emulate his brother, Luther took up the guitar himself. By the middle of his teens, he was good enough to sit in with his brother's band on club dates. By 1957, he had formed a band with Ollie and another brother, Grant Allison, initially called The Rolling Stones, later changed to The Four Jivers, and they performed at clubs in Chicago. Allison's big break came in 1957, when Howlin' Wolf invited him to the stage. The same year he worked briefly with Jimmy Dawkins, playing in local clubs. Freddie King took Allison under his wing, and after King got a record deal, Allison took over his gig in the house band of a club on Chicago's West Side. He worked the club circuit in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, Allison moved to California for a year where he worked with Shakey Jake Harris and Sunnyland Slim. He recorded his first single in 1965. He signed a recording contract with Delmark Records in 1967 and released his debut album Love Me Mama the following year. His style has been described as "dirty blues with a mean guitar sound". Standout albums include the early recordings Love Me Mama (1970), Bad News Is Coming (1972), Luther's Blues (1974), and Love Me Papa (1977), plus the late career albums Soul Fixin' Man (1994) and Live in Chicago (1999). Allison died on August 12, 1997, five days before his 58th birthday, in Madison, Wisconsin. His final album Reckless had just been released five months prior. His son Bernard Allison, at one time a member of his band, is now a solo recording artist. Bernard, the youngest of nine siblings, made his first venture into the music business at age 13, when he performed on a live album with his father. Allison was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1998.
Artist Website: wikipedia/Luther_Allison
Featured Albums: Luther Allison
Related Artists: Freddie King, Bernard Allison
