A popular face from the days of the Marlborough International Jazz Festival will be back on a Marlborough stage on Friday 2 Aug. Jazz Fest favourite Lil’ Jimmy Reed will be headlining a blues night at the Town Hall courtesy of Marlborough Arts Association.
Supporting Jimmy on the same bill will be Alabama Blues singer Debbie Bond with her quartet, all the way from Tuscaloosa in the deep south of the USA.
Described as ‘the last of the great Louisiana blues artists’ Lil’ Jimmy Reed was born as Leon Atkins just outside Baton Rouge. He experienced the hardships and discrimination from growing up poor and black in the Deep South and music was a way to escape the cycle of depression caused by grinding poverty.
One night in a blues club, Jimmy Reed, the legendary Blues musician, was scheduled to perform, but he arrived too drunk and Leon was asked to take his place. ‘They snuck him out back, and came and got me’, he recalls clearly. ”Mr. Reed was just too drunk to play.” He gave a show stopping performance and so was born ‘LIL’ JIMMY REED’.
He was awarded the Alabama Blues Treasure Award in 1995, named Blues Harmonica Player of the Year by the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, and inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2014.
Debbie Bond has dedicated her musical life to preserving and promoting Alabama’s rich blues heritage. This is true Deep South music with her soulful voice tempered by the rhythms of her beautifully understated guitar.
Tickets cost £25 and are available from the White Horse Bookshop in the High Street or online (click here) from the Pound Arts Centre website.
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