RIP: Koko Taylor

rimrocker · Jun 4, 2009

The iconic female blues voice... she died at 80.

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"She was of the same generation as Muddy [Waters] and [Howlin'] Wolf, she had those [Mississippi] Delta roots," he said Wednesday. "Even though she had been living in Chicago since the '50s, her music was still deeply rooted in the South. She had that rhythmic sense, that sense of where you lay the words and how the band locks in around the singer, that intensity of people who have lived that life."

Born Cora Walton in Memphis in 1928, she grew up on a sharecropper's farm outside Memphis. Young Cora and her three brothers and two sisters slept on pallets in a shotgun shack with no running water or electricity. By the time she was 11, both her parents had died. She picked cotton to survive, and moved to Chicago in the early '50s to be with her future husband, Robert "Pops" Taylor. She found a job working as a domestic. Pops Taylor died in 1989.

She had sung gospel music in church while living in the South, and on weekends would attend the blues clubs in Chicago's burgeoning South Side scene, the heyday of Chess Records and such stalwarts as Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon. She would occasionally sit in and caught the ear of Dixon, who approached her in the early '60s about recording one of his songs, “Wang Dang Doodle.”

"I didn't know Willie Dixon from Adam's house cat," Taylor recalled in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. "But he says to me, 'I love the way you sound' and, 'We got plenty of men out here singing the blues, but the world needs a woman like you with your voice to sing the blues.' "

Taylor's 1965 hit recording of "Wang Dang Doodle" launched her career, and established her sound: a gruff, no-nonsense roar that was the female equivalent of Howlin' Wolf's baritone growl.

By becoming a bandleader and a powerful voice in a male-dominated scene, she broke down barriers for many female entertainers who followed.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-koko-taylor4-2009jun04,0,5036155.story
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eveluvsrox · Jun 4, 2009

I saw this on the news this mornting.

RIP

Dr of Dunk · Jun 4, 2009

I think the first time I ever heard of her was on the Cosby Show when Raven Simone's character lip sync'd to it. I've loved it ever since. I had forgotten about the song until a couple of years ago when I googled to find out who sang it. To me it's the definition of a woman singing the blues and kickin' ass.

Koko's Version :

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Olivia's lip sync :

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Faos · Jun 4, 2009

I saw her sing in a small club in Memphis about 20-25 years ago. I was sitting up front near the stage. She made some comments about me and my long eyelashes in a flirting way between one of her songs.

RIP

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RIP: Koko Taylor

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