Real Blues, Champion Jack Dupree

All things are connected, sort of. Yesterday I wrote about Keef Hartley because I had lost a post about him due to a problem with wordpress (too boring to explain fully, just stay with this). So last night I picked up Keef Hartley’s book Halfbreed opened it at random and started reading about Keef recording with Champion Jack Dupree.  That was at the same time as Champion Jack was on the stereo, spooky!

Champion Jack Dupree was a great blues singer who had the archetypal blues man. Orphaned when he was 2 he was raised in a home for ‘coloured waifs’. He was a self taught pianist who took to the road in the blues tradition. He dug ditches, worked as a cook, took all sorts of jobs as he moved round the country playing his blues.

After meeting Joe Louis he became a boxer winning several titles, hence the nickname Champion Jack. He was subjected to many racist incidents and like a lot of blues men left the States and moved to Europe. He eventually settled in Halifax, Yorkshire, UK where he spent much of the ,60s and ’70s before moving to Germany.