Koko Taylor

Koko Taylor American blues musician was born September 28, 1935 as Cora Walton, on a farm just outside Memphis, Tennessee.

Koko Taylor is a singer known primarily for her rough and powerful vocals and has been call

Koko Taylor American blues musician was born September 28, 1935 as Cora Walton, on a farm just outside Memphis, Tennessee.

Koko Taylor is a singer known primarily for her rough and powerful vocals and has been called, by blues fans, "the undisputed queen of the blues." She grew up in Memphis and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1954 with her husband, truck driver Robert "Pops" Taylor. In the late 1950s, Taylor began singing in Chicago blues clubs. She was spotted by Willie Dixon in 1962, and this led to wider performances and her first recording contract. In 1965, Taylor was signed by Chess Records, for which her single Wang Dang Doodle (written by Dixon, and a hit for Howlin' Wolf five years earlier) became a major hit, reaching number founr in 1966 and selling a million copies. Taylor has recorded many versions of this Dixon-penned song over the past several decades and has added more material, both original and covers, but has never repeated that initial chart success. National touring in the late 1960s and early 1970s improved her fan base, and she became accessible to a wider record-buying public when she signed with Alligator Records in 1975. She has since recorded over a dozen albums for that label, many nominated for Grammy awards, and come to dominate the female blues singer ranks, winning 10 W. C. Handy Awards. After her recovery from a near-fatal car crash in 1989, the 1990s found Taylor in movies such as Blues Brothers 2000, and she opened a blues club on Division St. in Chicago in 1994, but closed it in 1999.