Koko Taylor
Rising from the cotton fields of Tennessee, Koko Taylor became known as the
'Queen of the Chicago Blues' and was widely regarded as one of the great female
singers of her era and a natural successor to the likes of Bessie Smith, Memphis
Minnie and Ma Rainey.
Born on a sharecropping farm in rural Memphis, her mother died when she was
three and the family grew up in a shotgun shack without electricity, working in
the fields and singing in their gospel church on Sundays. She left for Chicago
in 1952 on a Greyhound bus with her future husband and 35 cents to her name, and
quickl...
