| theperfectageofrocknroll.com |

»» Once in a lifetime you may experience a brief moment when the stars align and something truly extraordinary happens. This will be the case in March and April 2010 when six of the greatest living blues legends assemble on stage for three incomparable nights of music. Not just legends in the Blues. Not just early architects of rock and roll. These are true American cultural icons including one recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship Award, the highest honor in the USA for traditional arts.

Once reunited in July 2008 for a part in the upcoming film "The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll," the old magic reemerged. These musicians continue to inspire the current rock and roll heroes so expect more than a few special guests to drop by. Staging such an epic event is a rare opportunity and will thus be captured for a feature documentary film described as The Last Waltz meets Buena Vista Social Club.   more »

| www.pinetopperkins.com |

»» Pinetop Perkins is one of the last great Mississippi bluesmen still performing. He began playing blues around 1927 and is widely regarded as one of the best blues pianists. He’s created a style of playing that has influenced three generations of piano players and will continue to be the yardstick by which great blues pianists are measured.

Born Willie Perkins, in Belzoni, MS, in 1913, Pinetop started out playing guitar and piano at house parties and honky-tonks but dropped the guitar in the 1940s after sustaining a serious injury in his left arm. Perkins worked primarily in the Mississippi Delta throughout the thirties and forties, spending three years with Sonny Boy Williamson on the King Biscuit Time radio show on KFFA, Helena, Arkansas. Pinetop also toured extensively with slide guitar player Robert Nighthawk and backed him on an early Chess session. After briefly working with B.B. King in Memphis, Perkins barnstormed the South with Earl Hooker during the early fifties. The pair completed a session for Sam Phillips’ famous Sun Records in 1953. It was at this session that he recorded his version of Pinetop Smith’s Boogie Woogie.   more »

| www.hubertsumlinblues.com |

»» When Hubert Sumlin plays guitar he takes you to his World of Blues Feeling -- from despair to ecstasy, from delicate grace to raw power, from lost to found. Though he’s influenced and inspired many of the most famous guitar players, Hubert owns the magic. His style is original and personal and instantly recognizable. What kind of man can make or break your heart with his guitar?

Hubert’s website is where you’d expect to find the historical and professional facts of his life, but that kind of writing could easily miss Hubert’s gift to us and how he stirs our deepest emotions both musically and personally. I’m writing this from the perspective of a friend, a musician who sometimes performs with Hubert, and a Blues guitar player who appreciates him. This is neither an objective, journalistic biography nor promotional hype, but it will tell you who Hubert is.   more »

| www.sugar-blue.com |

»» Grammy Award - winning harmonica virtuoso Sugar Blue is not your typical bluesman. Born James Whiting - he was raised in Harlem, New York, where his mother was a singer and dancer at the fabled Apollo Theatre. He spent his childhood among the musicians and show people who knew his mother, including the great Billie Holiday, and decided that he wanted to be a performer.

Blue received his first harmonica from his aunt, and proceeded to hone his chops by wailing along with Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder songs on the radio, he was soon to be influenced by the jazz greats such as Dexter Gordon and Lester Young. Sugar Blue has used this background to his advantage, though, creating an ultra-modern blues style and sound that is instantly recognizable as his own.   more »

| www.bobmargolin.com |

»» Bob Margolin is a Blues guitar player and vocalist, a recording artist who tours worldwide both leading his own band and The Bob Margolin All-Star Blues Jam. He won a Blues Music Award for Guitar in 2008, known as the W.C. Handy Award in 2005 when he won that year, and played guitar in Muddy Waters’ Band from 1973-’80.

He can be seen with Muddy Waters and The Band in The Last Waltz, the classic music documentary. His most recent album is The Bob Margolin All-Star Blues Jam for Telarc Records, which features many of today’s surviving Chicago Blues legends. Since the ‘90s, he has also recorded albums for the Powerhouse, Alligator, and Blind Pig labels. He writes a regular column for Blues Revue magazine and contributes to BluesWax.com online magazine.

Bob also has played on, produced or consulted on, and written liner notes for four reissues of Muddy Waters’ albums on the Sony/Legacy label. He appears on the Muddy Waters Classic Concerts DVD, playing in 1977 with Muddy and writing liner notes for the DVD.   more »

| www.williebigeyessmith.com |

»» Willie "Big Eyes" Smith was born in Helena, AR in 1936. At the age of 17 he ventured to Chicago where he heard Muddy Waters for the first time. Willie was hooked on the blues and the attraction to the music persuaded him to stay in Chicago.

In 1954 Willie, playing harmonica, formed a trio with drummer Clifton James. The trio built a following in Chicago and gigged around the area for a few years. During this same time, Willie played harp with several other artists including Bo Diddley, Arthur "Big Boy" Spires and Johnny Shines. In 1957 Willie joined Little Hudson's Red Devil Trio and switched to playing drums. After gigs or between sets, Willie started sitting in on drums with Muddy Waters' band. Muddy liked what he heard, and invited Willie to play drums on a 1959 recording session. Willie began to fill in for Muddy's drummer Francis Clay, and continued to play recording sessions with Muddy. In 1961, Willie replaced Clay in Muddy's band and played with Muddy till mid-1964. During this period, as he solidified his Chicago sound, Willie recorded with James Cotton, Jo Jo Williams and Muddy Waters on a tribute to blues vocalist Big Bill Broonzy.   more »

| myspace.com/bobstroger |

»» I was born in South East Missouri in a small town Haiti, where I lived on a farm. I moved to Chicago in 1955. I lived in the back of a night club on the West Side, where Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters played. It looked like they were having a lot of fun and I made up my mind that what I wanted to do was play music. I got married at an early age and I used to watch my brother-in-law play music. His name was Johnny Ferguson and he and JB Hutto had a band they called the Twisters. They were working on 39'th and State Street in Chicago and I would carry them to work every night and watch them. Then at home I would try to teach myself to play. My cousin Ralph Ramey said that we should start a band and we did just that. We got my brother (John Stroger), who played the drums, to learn the songs we knew and in four months we were making some noise. We went to a club and played two songs and the man said we had a job. It was one of the better clubs, where musicians like Memphis Slim worked. The owner wanted us to wear uniforms but we had no money to buy them, so we got black tams and put a red circle in the top and called the band the Red Tops and that was the way it started. We got so good that they wanted the band to travel, but Ralph's wife did not wont him to travel. so my brother formed a band with Willie Kent and myself and called it Joe Russel and the Blues Hustlers. We played together for a while,but eventually I decided to move on, because i wanted to travel more and see the world and I found out you can make money doing this. I joined a jazz band and played with Rufus Forman for about 3 years, but we were doing very little work. Then I met Eddie King and we talked. I told him I was in a jazz band and we needed a guitar player that could play blues. He sead OK and joined our groop, and we started playing blues and RB and things took off. We called the band Eddie King and King Men, and we stayed together for 15 years. Then we split up for about 2 years and later we started the band up as Eddie King and Babee May and the Blues Machine and we stayed together until Eddie King moved out of town. I quit playing for 2 years becouse we were so close I did not want to play with anyone but Eddie. Then I met Jessie Grean when I was playing with Morris Pejo and he liked the way I played bass and one night Otis Rush need a bass player, so Jessie said come and work with him. The rest is history. I have been playing music for 39 years and I am still having fun.   more »