Long Live The Queen of the Blues

The blues runs through my blood. It seeped in through the Mississippi cotton fields of my father and the New Orleans swamp land of my grandfather. It jumped out and grabbed me in Chicago blues clubs and never let go. Although the genre reveres and focuses on men and manhood, Koko Taylor snatched the spotlight with gutsy vocals and growls that few men matched. She was born to Memphis sharecroppers and scrubbed floors in Chicago houses until Willie Dixon heard her formidable contralto and urged her to record. He wrote her signature 1965 hit "Wang Dang Doodle," which pushed her to the forefront of the blues, where she remained for four decades straight. She won 29 music awards over her impressive career, including a Grammy and an NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award. What made Koko Taylor the Queen of the Blues was not just her voice but a regal, commanding spirit that forces your attention. The blues doesn't just represent pain and sorrow, but strength and the joy of living. Koko personified those characteristics. She died today at 80, from complications of gastrointestinal surgery. Her music and spirit live on as vividly as when she performed. The video below shows Koko performing last year at the Kennedy Center Honors. She honors Mississippi native Morgan Freeman but as you can see from Pete Townsend's face, she's really demonstrating the unending legacy of the blues. It's an appropriate display of her fierceness, commanding the stage at 79, singing a female version of the song popularized by Muddy Waters as an anthem to manhood.