January 3

Albert “Little Smokey” Smothers was born on January 2, 1939, in Tchula, Mississippi, and began playing guitar at 15. Two years later, Smothers moved to Chicago and shortly after landed gigs with Arthu...

Earl Rodney Jones, legendary radio personality, DJ, and Bluseologist, died on Friday, January 2, 2004 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana of lung cancer at the age of 75. E. Rodney Jones was born on August 8, 1...

Bo Diddley’s “Pretty Thing” becomes a Top Forty hit in January 1956. One of Bo Diddley’s best-known songs, “Pretty Thing,” inspired a British band to name itself the Pretty Things.

Ernest Joseph Thomas, known to the world as “Tabby Thomas”; also known as “Rockin’ Tabby Thomas,” was born on January 5, 1929 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tabby Thomas is one of the best known blues mus...

Odetta Holmes, "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" and "The queen of American folk music", most affectionately known as Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama on December 31, 1930 and grew up in...

Ellas “Bo Diddley” Bates, known to the world as “Bo Diddley” was born on Sunday, December 30, 1928, on a small farm near the town of McComb, Mississippi, in rural Pike County, close to the Louisiana b...

Henry Roeland Byrd, known to the world, as Professor Longhair, one of New Orleans’ greatest pianist, was born December 19, 1918 in the small rural town of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the only son of Ella Mae...

Soul singer Louis "Big Lou" Washington Sr passed away on Monday, November 4, 2019 in St Martinville, Louisiana. He was the fourth child of Nathan Washington and Stella Moore-Washington. "Big Lou" Wash...

Harry 'Big Daddy' Hypolite, talented guitarist and sideman for more than 40 years, most notably in the bands of the Zydeco great Clifton Chenier, later Chenier's son C.J. Chenier and Nathan & the Zyde...

Joseph Adam Mouton, known to the Zydeco Nation as Zydeco Joe, died on Saturday, November 17, 2007 at Lafayette general hospital in Lafayette Louisiana of a massive heart attack due to complications re...

Derrick J. Guidry, scrubboard player for the Zydeco Boneshakers, was born June 20, 1986 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Southern Soul and Blues singer, Tyrone Davis, was born on May 4, 1938 to Willie Branch and Ora Lee Jones in a rural community twenty miles outside of Greenville, Mississippi. Working as a valet/chaffe...