Tampa Red › Similar Artists

Sleepy John Estes - 100% match to Tampa Red

John Adams Estes, 25 January 1899, Ripley, Tennessee, USA, d. 5 June 1977, Brownsville, Tennessee, USA. This influential blues singer first performed at local house-parties while in his early teens. In 1916 he began working with mandolin player Yank Rachell, a partnership that was revived several times throughout their respective careers. It was also during this formative pe Read more

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - 78% match to Tampa Red

24 August 1905, Forest, Mississippi, USA, d. 28 March 1976, Nassawadox, Virginia, USA (1974 is also cited). During the 40s and early 50s Crudup was an important name in the blues field, his records selling particularly well in the south. For much of his early life Crudup worked in various rural occupations, not learning to play the guitar until he was 32. His teacher was one Read more

Blind Boy Fuller - 78% match to Tampa Red

Fulton Allen, 1908, Wadesboro, North Carolina, USA, d. 13 February 1941, USA. One of a large family, Fuller learned to play the guitar as a child and had begun a life as a transient singer when he was blinded, either through disease or when lye water was thrown in his face. By the late 20s he was well known throughout North Carolina and Virginia, playing and singing at count Read more

Roosevelt Sykes - 73% match to Tampa Red

31 January 1906, Elmar, Arkansas, USA, d. 17 July 1983, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Sykes learned piano at the age of 12 and by the early 20s was playing in local barrelhouses. He moved to St. Louis in 1928 and his first recordings for OKeh Records and Victor Records were made from 1929-31. During the 30s, Sykes recorded for Decca Records and acted as a talent scout for the Read more

Frank Frost - 67% match to Tampa Red

15 April 1936, Auvergne, Arkansas, USA, d. 12 October 1999, Helena, Arkansas, USA. Frost’s skills encompassed keyboards and guitar, but like many other blues artists, he started with the harmonica. After moving to St. Louis as a teenager, he took up playing with Sonny Boy ‘Rice Miller’ Williamson in the mid-50s, appearing regularly with him on the famous radio Read more

Big Joe Williams - 66% match to Tampa Red

Joe Lee Williams, 16 October 1903, Crawford, Mississippi, USA, d. 17 December 1982, Macon, Mississippi, USA. Big Joe Williams was one of the most important blues singers to have recorded and also one whose life conforms almost exactly to the stereotyped pattern of how a ‘country’ blues singer should live. He was of partial Red Indian stock, his father being ‘R Read more

Leroy Carr - 62% match to Tampa Red

27 March 1905, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, d. 29 April 1935, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. A self-taught pianist, Carr grew up in Kentucky and Indiana but was on the road working with a travelling circus when still in his teens. In the early 20s he was playing piano, often as an accompanist to singers, mostly in and around Covington, Kentucky. In the mid-20s he partnered Scrapp Read more

Victoria Spivey - 62% match to Tampa Red

15 October 1906, Houston, Texas, USA, d. 3 October 1976, New York City, New York, USA. Spivey was recording at the age of 19, and enjoyed early hits with ‘Black Snake Blues’, ‘Dope Head Blues’ and ‘T.B. Blues’, all sung in her unmistakable nasal, acidic tones. She worked as a songwriter for a St. Louis based publishing company in the late 20s, a Read more

Phillip Walker - 61% match to Tampa Red

11 February, 1937, Welsh, Louisiana, USA. Originating from the Port Arthur area of Louisiana, Walker worked in many bands building a reputation as a performer of note. Moving to Los Angeles, he recorded for the small Elko label before finally having an album made up from tracks recorded for producer Bruce Bromberg during 1969-72. These were released on Hugh Hefner’s Pla Read more

Peetie Wheatstraw - 60% match to Tampa Red

William Bunch, 21 December 1902, Ripley, Tennessee, USA, d. 21 December 1941, East St. Louis, Illinois, USA. Wheatstraw, also known as the Devil’s Son-In-Law and the High Sherrif Of Hell, was an influential and popular blues artist of the 20s and 30s. His claim that he had sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads was echoed in the legend that grew around the more reve Read more

J.B. Hutto - 59% match to Tampa Red

Joseph Benjamin Hutto, 26 April 1926, Elko, near Blackville, South Carolina, USA, d. 12 June 1983, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Hutto’s family moved to Augusta, Georgia when he was three years old, and he later sang in the Golden Crowns Gospel Singers, before moving to Chicago in 1949. While in Chicago he began to play drums and sing blues with Johnny Ferguson’s Twister Read more

Frank Stokes - 58% match to Tampa Red

1 January 1888, Whitehaven, Tennessee, USA, d. 12 September 1955, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Stokes was raised in Mississippi, taking up the guitar early in life. He worked on medicine shows, and in the streets of Memphis in the bands of Will Batts and Jack Kelly. By 1927, when Stokes and his fellow guitarist Dan Sane made their first records as the Beale Street Sheiks, they w Read more

Jimmy Rogers - 58% match to Tampa Red

Furry Lewis - 53% match to Tampa Red

Walter Lewis, 6 March 1893, Greenwood, Mississippi, USA, d. 14 September 1981, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Furry Lewis was a songster, a blues musician, a humorist and an all-round entertainer. Raised in the country, he picked up the guitar at an early age and moved into Memphis around 1900 where he busked on the streets. After he ran away from home, he had experience working o Read more

Bukka White - 52% match to Tampa Red

Booker T. Washington White, 12 November 1906, Houston, Mississippi, USA, d. 26 February 1977, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. White learned guitar and piano in his teens, and hoboed from 1921, playing blues with artists such as George ‘Bullet’ Williams. In the mid-30s White was a boxer and baseball pitcher. He recorded for Victor Records in 1930, a largely unissued sessio Read more