Jo Ann Kelly
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Jo Ann Kelly (5 January 1944 — 21 October 1990[1]) was a English blues singer and guitarist.
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[edit] Life and career
Kelly was born in Streatham, South London, and with her brother, Dave Kelly, and became blues fans in their teens.[2]
Few women were singing or playing the blues during the '60s, let alone with her skill or understanding of early blues styles. Jo Ann had a voice far bigger than her slight frame would suggest; with a rich, deep, tonal quality that could easily have come from Dinah Washington or Sister Rosetta Tharpe. At the end of the '60s, with an album on a major record label in the United States, it seemed that she might be spirited away there and moulded into another Janis Joplin; but her allegiance was to England and the nightclub club scene, although, the '70s and '80s would fail to support her financially and so she took to the European circuit, latterly with the guitarist Pete Emery or in bands.[2]
Indeed, in the early '80s, she was a member of the Terry Smith Blues Band.
In 1988, Kelly began to suffer from headaches.[1]. In 1989 she had an operation to remove a malignant brain tumour.[3] She died in October 1990, at the age of 46.
The latest Kelly compilation album, Blues and Gospel, is available on Blues Matters! Records.
[edit] Citations
- "It was hard to do "Walking Blues" for instance, but I was not born with a voice like Mavis Staples or Jo Ann Kelly." (Bonnie Raitt)
- "Unquestionably the queen of British country blues singers" (Paul Jones of The Blues Band)
- "To many American performers", an obituarist wrote, "Jo Ann Kelly was the only British singer to earn their respect for her development of what they would be justified in thinking as 'their' genre".[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b All Music Guide - accessed January 2008
- ^ a b c Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books Limited, p. 130. ISBN 1-85868-255-X.
- ^ Fansite biography - accessed January 2008
