BLUES FESTIVAL: Koko Taylor still 'hot as a red pepper'

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By Gayle Worland, Wisconsin State Journal | Wednesday, July 2, 2008 3:14 PM CDT | () comments

For a queen, Koko Taylor is very accessible.

“I’m always thinking about my audience — not me,” the famed blues singer explains from her home on Chicago’s South Side. “Because I already know what I’m going to say and do. I am who I am.”

And that means she is “Queen of the Blues,” the crown Taylor has worn for decades. Now 71 years old, she says (although other accounts put her at 80), the Grammy Award winner has a busy schedule this summer, including Friday night at the I H Mississippi Valley Blues Festival.

Born on a sharecropper’s farm in Tennessee and orphaned by age 11, she married truck driver Robert “Pops” Taylor in her 20s and moved with him to Chicago, where both got day jobs and played the blues by night. In 1963, Koko Taylor was “discovered” by Willie Dixon; three years later, she hit the big time with her recording of Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle.”

In the four decades since, Taylor has shared the stage and recording studio with the legendary likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Buddy Guy; sung for presidents; recorded 16 albums and become one of the Windy City’s most important musical treasures.

Twice, she has stopped touring altogether because of serious health conditions. But if things continue as is, “I intend to be there” (at her shows), she says, “as hot as red pepper.”

“My health depends on God,” adds Taylor, whose daughter keeps things purring on the home front while she’s on tour. “I’m feeling fine today, but how I’ll be doing tomorrow, I couldn’t tell nobody that because I don’t know myself. I just trust and hope that I’ll feel as well tomorrow as I do today.”

Taylor’s most recent album, “Old School,” ran away with three 2008 Blues Music Awards. The singer occasionally co-hosts the Webcast “Blues You Can Use,” oversees a foundation to help uninsured musicians with medical bills and runs her own record label, Spellbound, founded to showcase young artists dedicated to keeping the blues alive.

How does she do it all? “Well, No. 1, it’s what I want to do,” says Taylor, who’s power voice has been described as a hurricane, mighty enough to flatten a listener against the wall.

“When a person is doing something they like, they always have more energy and more feeling about what they’re doing. If I was out there singing because somebody told me, ‘Koko, this is what I want you to do,’ it wouldn’t be the same,” she says. “But I’m doing what I enjoy doing, making the people happy with my music all over the world.”

Taylor’s other passion: her grandchildren, ages 5 to 14.

“I wouldn’t take nothing over my grandkids. They’re more precious than gold,” she says. “That’s what keeps me alive, keeps me going, keeps me healthy and active, just being around the house with these kids. Then, when I leave the kids, I’m with the public, and that keeps me going.”

But what about “Wang Dang Doodle”? Does she ever get tired of singing that?

“Yes,” she says unequivocally. “But I know every fan out there is waiting to hear it because that is one of my key songs. So I have to put that in it (her show) every time I sing — which I don’t mind because my job is to please the public, and that’s what I do.

“I am a blues singer,” she continues. “Not a rock, pop, jazz singer, none of that. I’m singing nothing but blues. So if that’s what the people what to hear from Koko, that’s what they’re going to get.”

Gayle Worland is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, a Lee Enterprises newspaper. Contact the features desk at (563) 383-2345 or newsroom@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.