FRIDAY JUNE 6, 2025 CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL AT MILLENNIUM PARK

Jay Pritzker Pavilion

7:30-9:00pm - B.B. King Centennial Tribute featuring Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, D.K. Harrell, and Jonathan Ellison with the B.B. King Centennial Band B.B. King’s legacy is immense. Whether it’s traditional electric blues, acoustic folk blues, soul blues or jazz-inflected big band blues, King excelled at all of them. This September will mark the 100 years since his birth in the Mississippi Delta. After learning his craft in the 1930s, he went on to create his own style in 1950s Memphis, while also helping launch the birth of rock ’n’ roll. As King enjoyed wide popular success in the 1960s and 1970s he became a global spokesman for the music. Since King’s death in 2015, the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Miss., has continued to tell the story of his life while promoting the music he created in the region. The institution’s B.B. King Centennial Band presents the full scope of his seven decades in music. Multi-instrumentalist Dr. Alphonso Sanders leads the ensemble, which also includes Jessie Robinson who was one of the last guitarists to front the B.B. King Blues Band after King’s passing. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, D.K. Harrell and Jonathan Ellison will share the stage as well as headline their own festival sets. (Aaron Cohen)

6:30-7:15pm - John Primer with Steve Bell

Born into a sharecropping family in Camden, Miss., John Primer moved to Chicago in 1963.  Within a few years, he was performing outdoors in the city’s revered Maxwell Street Market—a fitting musical baptism for a bluesman who would later bill himself as “The Real Deal.” The following decades would see him playing alongside and learning from some of the blues’ most storied figures, including Junior Wells and guitarist Sammy Lawhorn; Willie Dixon; Muddy Waters; and Magic Slim. He’s been on his own since the mid-1990s, steadfast in his dedication to carrying on the shuffle-driven Chicago style he learned from those masters.  At the age of 80, his vocals remain full-throated and resonant; his leads are expressive and graceful; his slide work is supple and fiery; his deep-pocketed rhythmic drive invokes the urban jukes of Chicago’s blues heyday. Neither a revivalist or a re-discoverer of vintage treasures, Primer plays and celebrates the blues as a music of today, imbued with a message of hope and survival that transcends timelines, genre distinctions, and generational labels. (DW)

5:15-6:15pm - Dawn Tyler Watson

Dawn Tyler Watson’s music—soul-stirring, adventurous, resonant with both emotional honesty and flawless technical acumen—reflects her background. Born in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Canada when she was a young girl. At Concordia University in Montreal, she majored in Jazz Studies; her true career as a blues singer, though, began a few years later, in 1997, when she contributed three songs to the compilation Preservation Blues Revue and followed that up with a performance on the blues stage at the Montreal Jazz Festival. That was when, as she has said, “the blue chose me,” and she has never looked back. Watson’s jazz training has gifted her with the ability to improvise with a dexterity usually associated in blues with instrumentalists more than vocalists. She is also a member of “Sistah Girls,” a consortium of Black women performing artists, originally brought together by Canadian vocalist Shakura S’aida, who support one another, their shared legacy, and their shared musical vision in their friendship as well as their artistic endeavors.  (DW)

4:00-5:00pm - D.K. Harrell

The past two years have been exciting for guitarist D.K. Harrell and, in many ways, he is just getting started. His debut album, “The Right Man,” came out in 2023 and updated classic big band blues through the lens of his original compositions. His upcoming “Talkin’ Heavy” will be released on June 20 (on Chicago’s Alligator). Growing up in the rural Louisiana town of Ruston, he started playing harmonica in the style of Little Walter but then, at 12, picked up the guitar and taught himself while paying close attention to videos of B.B. King. Throughout “The Right Man,” it’s clear how much Harrell has listened to King’s vibrato while adding in his own feel. Now he’s the one giving lessons: “There are a lot of guitar players today who (are playing a million notes) and thinking that’s melodic—and that’s okay,” Harrell said in a 2023 interview with Blues Blast Magazine. “But to me, all they’re doin’ is showin’ off. But you’ve gotta have tone when you hit those notes to make people cry.” (AC)

Visit Mississippi Crossroads Stage (South Promenade)

4:30-5:45pm - Eddie Cotton

Eddie Cotton grew up in the church: his father, a founder of the Christ Chapel Church of God in Christ in Clinton, Miss., bought him his first electric guitar when he was six, and within a few years he was the lead guitarist in his church band. He studied music theory at Jackson State University, where he explored the shared roots between the gospel music he’d grown up with and the blues and soul he heard on an everyday basis. His style today is a secularized meld of gospel, soul, and down-home blues that harks back to the classic 1960s Stax/Muscle Shoals era while incorporating a piercing, string-bending guitar style reminiscent of B.B. or Albert King at their most expressive. Propelled by a deep rhythmic groove overlaid with his dexterous guitar runs and emotion-rich vocals, it tells stories of both struggle and survival, lifting our spirits even as it motivates our bodies and our feet. (DW)

3:00-4:15pm - Johnny Rawls Soul Review

Born in Columbia, Miss., in 1951, Johnny Rawls landed his first gig when he was in junior high school, playing in a local band that backed up touring artists coming through the area. By his mid-teens he was accompanying Joe Tex, Z.Z. Hill, and the Sweet Inspirations; his reputation spread, and singer O.V. Wright appointed him to be his band director, a role he also performed for Little Johnny Taylor after Wright’s death in 1980. Since launching his own career in 1985, Rawls has released over twenty albums and CDs showcasing a style rooted in deep soul and blues but flavored with a pop-tinged melodicism that enhances his music’s flexibility and range and has helped make him one of today’s most popular blues/soul-blues entertainers. Dedicated to honoring the legacies of his mentors and idols, Rawls has also released tributes to Wright and Otis Clay. Meanwhile, the title of his 2020 album “Where Have All The Soul Men Gone” further exemplifies his dedication to honoring the music while keeping it alive. (DW)

1:30-2:45pm - Vick Allen featuring the Velvet Soul Band

Vick Allen first made his name with the Canton Spirituals, one of Mississippi’s fabled gospel aggregations. These days, he’s one of Southern soul’s most eloquent vocal stylists with a sinewy, disarmingly youthful-sounding voice laced with eroticism and vulnerability. His 2007 album “Baby Come Back Home” catapulted him into the front ranks of the contemporary scene, but it was with 2009’s “Truth Be Told,” that he truly arrived: no fewer than five tracks from that album became hits on radio and in clubs. The most notable was “Forbidden Love Affair (The Preacher Song),” on which Allen’s crushed-velvet vocals conveyed a bracing meld of compassion, righteous outrage, and irony. In Allen’s anthemic 2012 ballad “Soul Music,” he stakes his claim as both a carrier of the flame and a modernist: “Like Donny Hathaway, Like Aretha, like Johnnie Taylor,” he declares, “Let’s go back to singing, and not just putting on a show.”  (DW)

12-1:15pm - Lady Adrena and LA Band

Jackson, Miss., native Adrienne Palmer, known to the blues world as Lady Adrena, got her musical start in the County Line Baptist Church in the nearby town of Pocahontas at the age of five. Upon deciding to go secular, she initially gravitated toward the modern blues/soul/R&B hybrid known as Southern soul; her 2018 release, “Slay the Big Girl Way,” an anthem of empowerment and self-love for big, beautiful women credited to “Adrena the Songstress,” exemplifies her early fusion of emotionally charged vocals laid over spiky, R&B-flavored studio backing tracks. She has said, though, that as she progressed she became increasingly drawn to the rawer, more organically textured sounds of straight-ahead blues; that’s what she showcases in her 2023 release “Recipe For the Blues,” which features her gritty vocals backed by a tightly wound studio band, spinning tales drawn from a life well-lived, toughened by adversity and buoyed by faith. (DW)

Rosa’s Lounge (North Promenade)

6:30-7:45pm - The Mike Wheeler Band

Guitarist Mike Wheeler cut his chops as a sideman with some of Chicago blues’ most esteemed practitioners, beginning in 1984 with pianist Lovie Lee, formerly Muddy Waters’ keyboard man. Gifted with the proverbial big ears of the improvising musician and a stylistic sensibility as flexible and adaptable as any in Chicago blues, Wheeler reflects blues diva Sharon Lewis’s dictum that “it’s all blues if it comes from the heart”: He taps a multitude of styles, genres, and subgenres in his playing while remaining true to the spirit of the music, and his emotional range is as wide and deep as his musical palette. Wheeler’s 2012 debut for the Delmark label, “Self Made Man,” proclaimed his arrival as a front-line artist. He has also served with Big James & The Chicago Playboys. Although Wheeler continues to work as an accompanist with such noted vocalists as Demetria Taylor and Mzz Reese, he has become acknowledged as a premier blues stylists in his own right. (DW)

5:00-6:15pm - Sheryl Youngblood

Sheryl Youngblood is a powerful blues vocalist, but never expect her to just stand and sing. An expert multi-instrumentalist, she can take over the drum chair or turn a microphone stand into its own kind of percussion. She can also lead from behind the keyboard (offstage, she’s a certified audio technician and videographer). Youngblood has always been all about exploring different paths. Growing up in Joliet, Ill., she started singing in the Mt. Zion Baptist Church choir and also worked with the acclaimed Rev. Milton Brunson and the Thompson Community Singers of Chicago. She then turned secular, playing drums or singing behind such legends as Otis Clay and Artie “Blues Boy” White. In the mid-1990s, Youngblood started her own groups, including the all-women Ultimately Blessed and the funk band SAYYES! In 2013, she began fronting the Sheryl Youngblood Blues Band, which has become a local and global favorite. (AC)

3:30-4:45pm - Rico McFarland

Rico McFarland’s fretboard style is dexterous and hot-blooded, but he never sacrifices precision or musicality for cheap emotionalism. Growing up in the blues hotbed of 1960s/’70s-era West Side Chicago, he was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist by his mid-teens, working with some of Chicago’s premier bandleaders. Early on, he honed the rare sideman’s ability to listen carefully and blend into what was going on around him while always being ready to step out and unfurl solo statements that were crisp and to-the-point. The ensuing decades led to stints in the bands of such figures as Sugar Blue, Lucky Peterson, Albert King, Tyrone Davis, Otis Clay, Little Milton, James Cotton, and Jimmy Johnson, as well as the soul-funk aggregation Amuzement Park. In 2001 McFarland dropped “Tired of Being Alone,” his first full-length album as a leader; in the wake of that release, he has been appearing as a frontman with increasing frequency, but he’s still known largely as a “musicians’ musician,” so this is a relatively rare opportunity to catch one of our top guitar masters out front, at the height of his powers. (DW)

2:00-3:15pm - Jamiah “Dirty Deacon” Rogers and the Dirty Church Band

If anyone today personifies the expression “born to the blues,” it’s Jamiah Rogers. Mentored by his father, guitarist Tony Rogers, he was playing drums by the time he was three years old and he recorded his first CD, 2002’s “In the Pocket,” when he was seven. At 16, having chosen guitar as his primary instrument, he formed the blues power trio, Jamiah on Fire & the Red Machine.  He has made several more recordings since then, all of which show him melding his primary influences—Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan—into a style that’s distinctively his own, charged with youthful exuberance but avoiding both imitation and overkill. He’s an eloquent lyricist, his voice has grown in depth and sophistication along with his fretboard technique, and like other prodigies who grew to become acknowledged as masters, he commands stages at venues like Rosa’s Lounge with the confidence and panache of a fully developed musician, albeit one consumed with youthful fire and exploratory zeal. (DW)

12:30-1:45pm - Ivan Singh

Argentina-born guitarist Ivan Singh has made Chicago, and its music, his home. His arsenal includes the four-string batata box slide guitar, which lends him a distinctive sound that echoes Latin American roots. While Singh was growing up, his mother brought home B.B. King and Buddy Guy records and hearing them got him to start playing guitar at the age of 5. Singh released his self-titled debut album in 2019, singing in Spanish his own blend of blues, R&B with hints of salsa. He went on to tour the world, including sharing stages with his early heroes. Upon moving to Chicago about two years ago he has collaborated with new friends in the blues community, including John Primer, Jimmy Burns and Mike Wheeler. His own group has become a featured artist at such local venues as Rosa’s while he has also built a global following, especially after his 2023 performance at the Mahindra Blues Festival in Mumbai, India. (AC)