Eddie Shaw on tenor and alto saxes and harmonica is a very talented singer,songwriter,musician,arranger, and band leader. He was Howlin’Wolf’s personal manager for five years. Eddie is one of the most respected blues musicians alive today. Originally from Benoit, MS, Eddie now lives on Chicago’s South Side. Band Members include Eddie Vaan Shaw Jr. , Eddie’s son, is one of the best guitar players in the blues business. Vaan has music of his own , CD’s, MORNING RAIN and THE TRAIL OF TEARS. Lafayette” Shorty” Gilbert, has been Eddie’s bassplayer for over 20 yrs. Strong vocalist , his version of ” Rainy night in Georgia” brings tears to your eyes. Tim Taylor on drums, is son of the late Eddie Taylor . Since Howlin’ Wolf died in 1976, Eddie Shaw has kept the Wolf Gang name for his band, which currently features Shaw as lead vocalist and sax; Lafayette “Shorty” Gilbert, who’s earned the most seniority in the band after 20 years; pianist and Chicago fixture Detroit Junior; drummer Tim Taylor, son of the legendary guitarist Eddie, who has eight years of his own in the Wolf Gang; and son Eddie “Vaan” Shaw on guitar. Shaw’s family abounds with showbiz talent. Another of his sons, Stan, has acting credits in films diverse as Harlem Nights, Fried Green Tomatoes, Daylight with Sylvester Stallone, and Cutthroat Island, the Geena Davis pirate flick. Eddie Shaw can compose, arrange, and write music. He worked the Delmark studios managing weekly sessions for the label with fellow studio fixture Jimmy Dawkins in the ’60s. In the ’90s he recorded for European and Japanese labels as well as for Rooster Blues in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which released In the Land of the Crossroads. “On Land of the Crossroads I did mostly Mississippi bayou type blues because I stayed down in that part of the country,” Shaw says. “Well, times change too. You go in with more modern equipment and you go with more up-to-date ideas. . . . Every time you do a new album, you’re looking for better quality, you’re looking for better compositions, you know, to upgrade everything. You want everything better than it was the year before, so hopefully that’s the case now.”

Billy Flynn is an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. The Chicago Blues SuperSession is Bob STROGER (Bass and Vocals) Billy FLYNN (Guitar and Vocals) Oscar WILSON (Vocals) Dave KATZMAN (Guitar) Kenny SMITH (Drums) Omar COLEMAN (Harmonica and Vocals) Amy LOWE (Vocals) Melvin SMITH (Bass) Roosevelt PURIFOY (Keyboards) Marty BINDER (Drums) John KATTKE (Keyboards and Vocals)

When your mother plays nothing but the blues in the house, your cousin is blues titan Magic Sam, and you grow up in the same building with him on the west side of Chicago, you have little choice but to be firmly rooted in the blues.

As a teenager, Mike remembers all the backyard barbecue parties that Sam hosted. ‘’Man, he loved to barbecue. He used to have them all the time. And I remember all kind of blues musicians and singers like Otis Clay, Tyrone Davis, Betty Wright used to come around. Sam would cook and play blues on the back porch every chance he could. You could smell the barbecue clear down the street and all way at the end of the alley…’’ Already a singer in his teens, Mike soaked up as much as he could from his cousin, Magic Sam. In the middle seventies, Mike started singing at the Majestic Lounge on 14th and Pulaski with house blues bands, Scotty And the Rib Tips and Johnny B. Moore. He remembers, ‘’It was something, man, back then The Majestic was the after-gig joint. A lot of musicians would go there after their shows and just hang out. People like Lee Shot Williams, Mac Thompson, Johnny Dollar, Mary Lane. It was like a big family.’’ It is easy to understand how growing up so close to such R&B and soul singers as Otis Clay and Tyrone Davis could lead Mike down the path to R&B and soul music where he has focused much of his career. ‘’I’m not on the blues circuit, but that’s where my roots are. I couldn’t deny it if I wanted to. Giving me a good blues tune to sing is like taking me back home.’‘

Have Bass Will Travel…. I was born in South East Missouri in a small town Haiti, where I lived on a farm. I moved to Chicago in 1955. I lived in the back of a night club on the West Side, where Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters played. It looked like they were having a lot of fun and I made up my mind that what I wanted to do was play music. I got married at an early age and I used to watch my brother-in-law play music. His name was Johnny Ferguson and he and JB Hutto had a band they called the Twisters. They were working on 39’th and State Street in Chicago and I would carry them to work every night and watch them. Then at home I would try to teach myself to play. My cousin Ralph Ramey said that we should start a band and we did just that. We got my brother (John Stroger), who played the drums, to learn the songs we knew and in four months we were making some noise. We went to a club and played two songs and the man said we had a job. It was one of the better clubs, where musicians like Memphis Slim worked. The owner wanted us to wear uniforms but we had no money to buy them, so we got black tams and put a red circle in the top and called the band the Red Tops and that was the way it started. We got so good that they wanted the band to travel, but Ralph’s wife did not wont him to travel. so my brother formed a band with Willie Kent and myself and called it Joe Russel and the Blues Hustlers. We played together for a while,but eventually I decided to move on, because i wanted to travel more and see the world and I found out you can make money doing this. I joined a jazz band and played with Rufus Forman for about 3 years, but we were doing very little work. Then I met Eddie King and we talked. I told him I was in a jazz band and we needed a guitar player that could play blues. He sead OK and joined our groop, and we started playing blues and RB and things took off. We called the band Eddie King and King Men, and we stayed together for 15 years. Then we split up for about 2 years and later we started the band up as Eddie King and Babee May and the Blues Machine and we stayed together until Eddie King moved out of town. I quit playing for 2 years becouse we were so close I did not want to play with anyone but Eddie. Then I met Jessie Grean when I was playing with Morris Pejo and he liked the way I played bass and one night Otis Rush need a bass player, so Jessie said come and work with him. The rest is history. I have been playing music for 39 years and I am still having fun.

Kenny Smith is one of today’s top greatest blues drummers. he is an honored Grammy award-winning drummer, The son of the legendary Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith.