Robert Browning Associates presents Chicago Blues Legend & Recent Grammy Nominee LURRIE BELL

Lurrie Bell has been acclaimed for his intense guitar playing and passionate vocals which have made him a favorite at clubs and festivals around the world and earned him a reputation as one of the "leading lights" in the future of the blues. Son of famed blues harmonica player Carey Bell, he has appeared on over 50 recordings either as leader or featured sideman and received numerous awards and honors, including Best Traditional Male Blues Artist in 2015 by the Blues Foundation in Memphis, and Most Outstanding Musician (Guitar) in 2016 by Living Blues magazine. In this program he will be joined by his band and include selections from his acclaimed Delmark albums, Blues in My Soul and the recent Grammy-nominated Can't Shake This Feeling. His band is composed of Willie "The Touch" Hayes (drums), Roosevelt Purifoy (keys), and MElvin Smith (bass).

Lurrie Bell, born in 1958, picked up his father's guitar at the age of five. He grew up surrounded by many Chicago blues legends, including Big Walter Horton, Eddie Clearwater and Sunnyland Slim, who all helped to shape him and school him in the blues. At seven years old, Bell left Chicago to live in Mississippi and Alabama with his grandparents. During this time he played mostly in the church, immersing himself in the passionate expressiveness of the gospel tradition. At 14, he moved back to Chicago and continued to play in church, and formed his first blues band while attending high school. By 17, he was playing on stage with Willie Dixon. In 1977, he was a founding member of The Sons of Blues with Freddie Dixon and Billy Branch, and a year later joined koko Taylor's band, with which he stayed for several years. With his father he toured and made recordings, including Son of a Gun (Rooster Blues, 1984) and several titles for the UK's JSP Records. Battling and defeating a series of personal demons kept Lurrie out of the studio and off the road for a long spell in the late 1980s, but he persevered and re-surfaced in the mid-1990s with a succession of four noted records for Chicago's Delmark label.

Since the onset of the new millennium, Lurrie's profile has been steadily rising with a host of awards and a string of acclaimed recordings, including Second Nature (Alligator Records, 2004), a duet recording with his father which was nominated for a WC Handy Award Acoustic Record of the Year by the Blues Foundation in Memphis; his own Aria BG label's Let's Talk About Love and The Devil Ain't Got No Music, which was honored with the Prix du Blues award from the prestigious French L'Academie du Jazz for the Best Blues Recording of 2012; 2009's Chicago Blues: A Living History, a CD with Billy Boy Arnold, John Primer, and Billy Branch which garnered him his first Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Recording; and Delmark's Blues in My Soul and the recent Grammy-nominated Can't Shake This Feeling.

Made possible in part with public funding provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State legislature.

Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 8:00pm

Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave at 3rd Ave near BAM & Barclays Center, Brooklyn

Tickets: $25; seniors, students $21 917-267-0363

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiujMSlrN3s

Info & tickets: http://www.robertbrowningassociates.com/lurrie-bell.html