You are cordially invited to attend a showcase by one of the world’s premier blues harpists ‘Sugar Blue’. The Borderline, London 2nd April 2008.
“He is a very strange and talented musician” -Mick Jagger
“A powerful and fluent harmonica player who is also an effective and heartfelt singer in addition to being a superior writer of blues-oriented songs” –Billboard
“One of the foremost harmonica blowers in all of modern blues” –Rolling Stone
Few artists in a lifetime can claim to have truly mastered their artform. Although you’d never hear this from his own lips, there are plenty of others who have said just that and testify to bona fide harmonica deity, ‘Sugar Blue’.
One of the foremost blues harp musicians of his generation and indeed this century, Sugar Blue’s association with The Rolling Stones is perhaps his best known work, featuring on classic Stones’ albums ‘Some Girls’, ‘Emotional Rescue’ and ‘Tattoo You’. However, his other musical collaborators and luminaries read like a who’s who of rock’n’roll legends. They include Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Stan Getz and Junior Wells to name a few. He’s shared stages with the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Art Blakey and accompanied Fats Domino, Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis in the Cinemax special ‘Fats Domino and Friends’. When you speak of Sugar Blue, you are speaking of pure, unadulterated musical pedigree.
In 1985 this pedigree won Sugar Blue a Grammy Award for his work on the Atlantic album Blues Explosion, an album recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He further performed on Willie Dixon’s 1989 Grammy Award winning album Hidden Charms.
Sugar Blue encompasses all of his learnings and influences into his visionary and singular style; technically dazzling yet wholly soulful. He bends, shakes and spills flurries of notes with simultaneous precision and abandon, combining dazzling technique with smouldering expressiveness, giving off enough energy to light up Las Vegas. Through his musical endeavours, Sugar Blue has forged a modern style of Blues that is instantly recognisable as his own.
Music fans will be delighted to hear that Sugar Blue will be playing two ultra-rare UK appearances on a 30-date world tour. A tour covering all corners for the United States and far-reaching parts of Europe, which supports the release of his latest album ‘Code Blue’ out now on Beeble Music.
Previous tours and live gigs have seen Sugar Blue play to hundreds of thousands of music and blues fans all over the world, encompassing venues and festivals all over America, Europe and Africa.
Sugar Blue plays Deep Blues Club, York, on the 1st April, and The Borderline, London, on 2nd April 2008. Support comes in form of the highly regarded Elio D’Anna Jr and Vimana.
For more information, interview and guestlist requests to London gig, please contact Ben Allen or Jem Bahaijoub on ben@zestpr.com / jem@zestpr.com 020 7734 0206
