BLUES HALL OF FAME 2025
*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*
The Blues Foundation/ PR Contact: Doug Deutsch
(213) 924-4901 dougdeutschpr1956@gmail.com
(Memphis TN) – The Blues Foundation honors The Blues Hall Of Fame Class Of 2025 (45th class) with an Induction Ceremony taking place at The Canon Center For The Performing Arts, 255 N. Main St., Wednesday, May 7. A Cocktail Reception honoring the BHOF Inductees and Blues Music Awards nominees will begin at 5:30 p.m., with the formal inductions commencing at 6:30 p.m. Tickets, including the Ceremony and Reception, are $100 each and available with Blues Music Awards tickets.
The Blues Hall Of Fame Class Of 2025 inductees include Bob Stronger, William Bell, Blind Willie Johnson, Henry Townsend, and Jessie Mae Hemphill. Entering the Hall for Classic of Blues Recording – Album is Lightnin’ Hopkins, for the Gold Star Sessions. Classic of Blues Recording – Singles recipients include Irma Thomas, Sylvester Weaver, Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and B.B. King. For Classic of Blues Literature its Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues. Individuals- Business/Production/Media/Academic honors go to Bob Geddins.
Since its inception in 1980, The Blues Foundation has inducted new members annually into the Blues Hall of Fame for their historical contribution, impact, and overall influence on the Blues. Members are inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in five categories: Performers, Individuals, Classic of Blues Literature, Classic of Blues Recording (Song), and Classic of Blues Recording (Album). Over the years The Blues Foundation has inducted over four hundred industry professionals, recordings, and literature into the Blues Hall of Fame.
MEET THE CLASS OF 2025
Bob Stroger, still actively touring at the age of 94, is reaping the rewards for his decades of laying the foundation for countless blues bands. No performer has ever been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at an older age. He was also the 2024 recipient of the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist – Bass, the fifth time he had earned the honor.
Stroger had been a journeyman bassist with several small blues, R&B and jazz groups in Chicago before he became a steady, recognizable fixture on the international blues scene, initially thanks to his work behind Otis Rush starting in 1975. Even then, his surname (pronounced STRO-jer) was so unfamiliar to fellow musicians (and record producers) that the first times his name appeared in album credits he was listed as “Bob Strokes,” the way Rush and Sunnyland Slim knew him.
Robert T. Stroger was born December 27, 1930, on a farm between Hayti and Swift in the Missouri bootheel. He only took an interest in music after he moved to Chicago, especially when he lived on the West Side so close to the legendary Silvio’s that he could look out and see Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf through the windows. In 1949 he married the sister of guitarist Johnny Ferguson, who played in J.B. Hutto’s band. With further encouragement from Calvin “Fuzz” Jones and Bob Anderson, he learned guitar with the strings tuned to provide bass accompaniment before buying a four-string electric bass. He and his brother John had a group once called the Red Tops and then Joe Russell and the Blues Hustlers– eschewing the Stroger name another time for an easier pseudonym. Stroger went on to play locally with jazz saxophonist Rufus Forman (briefly), bluesman Morris Pejoe and others, enjoying a long stint with guitarist Eddie King playing blues and soul. His first studio recordings were with King in the 1960s. At times he also did factory work, ran a confectionery store and worked as an exterminator. In the 1950 census he described his job as “Make kitchen gadgets.”
Through Otis Rush’s drummer Jesse Green Stroger found a spot in Rush’s band, which led to studio and club work and his first European tours. Rush helped Stroger hone his playing into a strong, solid blues groove. Sunnyland Slim was a regular employer, and he also played and recorded with Snooky Pryor, Pinetop Perkins, Wille “Big Eyes” Smith, Jimmy Rogers, Carey Bell, Eddie C. Campbell, the band Mississippi Heat, Bob Corritore and many others, in the U.S. and overseas. At the urging of Sunnyland Slim he began singing and first recorded as a vocalist in 1993 on one track of a Mississippi Heat CD and then on a German CD credited to the Big Four Blues Band (with Steve Freund, Robert Covington and Sam Burckhardt).
His first CD under his own name was “In the House: Live at Lucerne, Vol. 1,” from the 1998 Lucerne Blues Festival, released by Crosscut in 2002, followed by “Bob Is Back in Town” on Airway (2006), “Keepin’ Together” on Big Eye (with Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith, 2014) and “That’s My Name” on Delmark (with a Brazilian band, the Headcutters, 2022). He also appears on various festival CDs from Lucerne and elsewhere and has joined several all-star aggregations. He has recently toured in a Chicago Blues SuperSession package, beaming with pleasure at still being able to do what he loves onstage. Grateful for the help offered him along his path to success especially by Rush, Sunnyland, Jimmy Dawkins and Eddie Taylor, he has in turn passed his knowledge and advice along, providing instructions to young musicians at the Pinetop Perkins Foundation in Clarksdale, Mississippi, every year.
William Bell, best known for his pioneering work at Stax Records in Memphis, has kept that honored legacy alive during his long career as soulful singer, songwriter, producer and label owner. Bell’s music has also encompassed gospel, doo-wop, jazz, R&B, blues, reggae, funk, disco and collaborations with rappers, and in recent years he has been a perennial contender in the soul blues categories of the Blues Music Awards.
Born William Henry Yarbrough in Memphis on July 16, 1939, he took the name Bell in honor of his grandmother, whose name was Belle, He started singing in church and began writing songs and recording as a teenager with a vocal group, the Del-Rios. He also worked with Phineas Newborn Sr.’s jazz group and found a mentor in another older Memphis veteran, Rufus Thomas. In 1961 Chips Moman produced Bell’s first solo record at Stax, the plaintive “You Don’t Miss the Water,” which hit “Cash Box” magazine’s national charts in 1962 and set Bell on tour. But Uncle Sam interrupted his trajectory by calling him into the U.S. Army for two years. Bell stayed with Stax, recording several albums and scoring 14 more hits on either the “Billboard” or “Cash Box” R&B or pop singles charts through 1974, including two duets with Judy Clay. He wrote songs with Booker T. Jones and others recorded by various Stax artists, including “Born Under a Bad Sign,” which became a classic for Albert King. Bell and Jones also produced King’s “Crosscut Saw.”
Bell and his manager, Atlanta promoter Henry Wynn, started their own label, Peachtree, in 1968 and recorded Mitty Collier, Johnny Jones & the King Casuals and others. Bell moved to Atlanta and pursued an acting career while also establishing another label, Wilbe, to release records by himself, bluesman Joey Gilmore and others. A Wilbe production deal with Mercury Records garnered him his best selling LP, 1977’s “Coming Back for More,” and his only No. 1 R&B single, “Tryin’ to Love Two.” Further hits followed on Kat Family and Wilbe. He was featured in “Take Me to River’ both as a televised 2014 documentary on Memphis music and on tour. Stax, revived under new ownership, released his live album “This Is Where I Live,” which won the GRAMMY Award as Best Americana Album of 2016.
Bell is still active with his Wilbe label and songwriting, with nearly 300 songs registered at the performance rights organization BMI. His songs have been recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, Linda Ronstadt, Otis Redding, Robert Cray, Bruce Springsteen and a plethora of others in many genres. He has continued to bolster his resume with appearances at the Chicago Blues Festival, the White House, and other events, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, a 1997 Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, and induction into halls of fame in Georgia, North Carolina and Memphis.
Blind Willie Johnson never recorded the blues, but the Texas guitar evangelist’s music has enraptured a multitude of blues fans and musicians for nearly a century. His genre has come to be called “holy blues” for its similarities to the blues format, its intensity and the superb slide guitar technique. “The Soul of a Man,” an episode in Martin Scorsese’s documentary series ”The Blues,” was named after a 1930 Johnson record and featured bluesman Chris Thomas King portraying Johnson—and actor Laurence Fishburne voicing Johnson in the scripted narration. And when the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes were launched in 1977, they each carried a recording, “The Sounds of Earth,” with audio tracks including Johnson ’s “Dark Was the Night—Cold Was the Ground.”
He was born Willie Johnson Jr, on January 25, 1897, in Pendleton, Texas, according to information he supplied when he registered for the World War I draft in Houston, although different dates and birthplaces have been cited elsewhere. Blinded as a child, reportedly by his stepmother, he took up guitar and based some of his music on hymns he learned in church in Marlin, Texas. Playing streetcorners, churches, and revivals with a tin cup tied to his guitar for tips, he befriended other blind street musicians and traveled through Texas and beyond.
Johnson first recorded in Dallas for Columbia in 1927. The company hailed his music as “nothing like anything else” in advertisements, and he became one of the most popular Black recording artists of the era until the Depression hit the record industry, and he never recorded after 1930. He met blues and gospel guitarist Blind Willie McTell at a Columbia session in Atlanta and the pair traveled and performed together, according to McTell. A preacher who knew him recalled Johnson once playing on one street corner while the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson was playing on another. In addition to his itinerant performing career the pious Johnson also pastored his own churches as Reverend W.J. Johnson at times.
Among his best known recordings were “Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time” (aka “Motherless Children”), “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” “John the Revelator,” “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed,” “Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Crying,” Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” “God Moves on the Water,” and “Let Your Light Shine on Me.” Most were religious but he also delivered morality messages and topical songs—but not blues per se. Even so, “Dark Was the Night,” which he hummed and moaned without actual lyrics, was selected as a Classic of Blues Recording by the Blues Hall of Fame in 1999. Many blues, folk and rock stars later recorded songs from the Johnson repertoire including Son House, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin. The 2016 Alligator CD “God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson” featured interpretations by Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Rickie Lee Jones, the Blind Boys of Alabama and others.
Johnson’s vocals often erupted into harsh, raspy declamations, sometimes enhanced by the sweet phrases sung by Willie B. Richardson. Later known as Willie B. Harris, she and another woman, Angeline Johnson, both claimed to have married Johnson and provided much of what we know about him. Angeline (aka Angilena, Anna, Anna Bell, Annie or Antonia in various documents) was the older sister of blues steel guitarist L.C. “Good Rockin’” Robinson, who cited Johnson as an early influence. Johnson died September 18,1945, of malarial fever after a fire destroyed his home and House of Prayer church in Beaumont. The Texas Historical Commission placed a marker at the site in 2010.
Henry Townsend, a key contributor to the St. Louis blues sound of the pre-World War era, enjoyed one of the longest careers in blues history. He recorded in every decade from the 1920s through the 2000s and was preparing to perform at a festival when he died on September 24, 2006, at the age of 96. A few months later he shared a posthumous GRAMMY Award for the album “Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas,” recorded alongside fellow veterans Robert Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards and Pinetop Perkins.
Townsend was not a Delta blues stylist, although he was born in the Delta town of Shelby on October 27, 1909. His family moved to other locales in Mississippi, Memphis, Caruthersvlle, Missouri, and Cairo, Illinois, where Townsend caught a freight train to St. Louis to avoid a beating from his father. Inspired in St. Louis by guitar icon Lonnie Johnson, Clifford Gibson, Henry Spaulding, and other local bluesmen, Townsend bought his first guitars. He found he had a gift not only as an instrumental virtuoso but also as a lyricist who could improvise new songs on the spot. On November 15, 1929, at the age 20, Townsend made his first records for Columbia.
Townsend made further records for Paramount, Victor and Bluebird in the 1930s and played on sessions by St. Louis-based artists Roosevelt Sykes, Walter Davis, Robert Lee McCoy (aka Robert Nighthawk), Big Joe Williams, and Pine Top Sparks, as well as Memphis Minnie on one outing to Chicago. He played guitar on—and said he wrote—the first-ever version of “Every Day I Have the Blues” by Sparks in 1935. He most frequently teamed with pianists Sykes or Davis in taverns and nightclubs, and also played with Robert Johnson, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson and many others, while also working as a taxi driver. He learned piano from Sykes and in return taught Sykes some guitar. After serving in World War II he moved to Chicago and recorded for the Bullet label in 1948 but as public tastes in blues changed, he decided to find steady employment back in St. Louis as a hotel manager and then as an insurance collector. Whether as a musician or in other work, he was known for his thoughtful, businesslike, and uncompromising demeanor. He earned the nickname “Mule” for his stubborn, determined nature.
As researchers sought out older bluesmen in the 1960s, several of Townsend’s prewar recordings were reissued on LP and he began to record again. He recorded full albums for Prestige/Bluesville, Adelphi, Nighthawk, Swingmaster, Wolf, Blueberry Hill and APO and made appearances on several others. He performed at festivals and concerts in the U.S. and Europe playing guitar and piano, sometimes with his wife Vernell, and served as a mentor to young musicians in St. Louis. As a former Paramount recording artist, he was scheduled to highlight the inaugural Paramount Blues Festival in Grafton, Wisconsin, in 2006 but fell ill when he arrived and passed away in a hospital in nearby Mequon.
Townsend was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship in 1985 and was honored on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1995. His autobiography, “A Blues Life: Henry Townsend,” as told to Bill Greensmith, was published in 1999.
Jessie Mae Hemphill cut a unique and colorful figure as queen of the North Mississippi Hill Country blues scene. A three-time winner as traditional female blues artist of the year in the 1987, 1988 and 1994 W.C. Handy Blues Awards (later renamed the Blues Music Awards), Hemphill came from a long line of musicians dating back to her great-grandfather Dock Hemphill and including her parents and aunts as well as her grandfather, Sid Hemphill, who recorded for Alan Lomax and Lewis Jones in 1942. Her rhythmic, rough-hewn music was spirited and gritty–unadorned, in contrast to her sequined apparel, wigs, cowboy hats, and other bold accoutrements.
Born Jessie Mae Graham in Panola, Mississippi, on October 18, 1923 (a decade before the birthdate she claimed), she learned drums and guitar as a child and played in various fife and drum bands at Hill Country picnics over the years, first with Sid Hemphill and later with Napolian Strickland, Otha Turner and others. She lived in Memphis on and off during the 1940s and ‘50s and worked as an elevator operator and as a waitress at several cafes and clubs. She performed at times but her musical career did not gain momentum until she began recording and touring as a singer-guitarist in the late 1970s. To enhance the rhythmic impact of her modal one-chord style, she also played a tambourine with her foot and later added ankle bells.
Folklorist George Mitchell first recorded Hemphill in 1967 but those sides were not released until 2008 by Fat Possum. David Evans of Memphis State University produced most of Hemphill’s records and also played guitar behind her on many sessions and personal appearances. Two singles and an LP were released on the university’s High Water label, but the first album, “She-Wolf,” came out on a French label, Vogue, in 1981. Other labels including Hightone/HMG, Inside Sounds and Mississippi Records, also later released material from Evans’ sessions. The High Water LP “Feelin’ Good” won a 1991 Handy Award. Her work has also been featured on Black & Blue and Wolf. Hemphill played a drum on a 1980 European tour (the first by an African-American fife and drum band) and in the 1991 documentary “Deep Blues.” She and Abe Young played drums with fife blower Otha Turner on the childrens’ TV show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in 1982. She was later featured in a French documentary by Marc Oriol, “Me & My Guitar, Jessie Mae Hemphill.”
Hemphill became a favorite on the traditional blues circuit in the U.S. and internationally but her blues career was cut short by a stroke in 1993 that left her unable to play guitar. She still entertained visitors with her stories at her trailer home and could still sing and play tambourine—but abdicated the blues and devoted herself to gospel music. Her last recording was a double gospel CD also released on DVD, “Dare You to Do It Again,” in 2004, on 219 Records. Hemphill died in Memphis hospital on October 22, 2006. A Mississippi Blues Trail marker was placed in 2011 at the cemetery where she was buried in Senatobia.
Bob Geddins produced a treasure trove of records that defined the down-home blues and gospel sounds of the San Francisco/Oakland area in the post-World War II years. While West Coast blues is often associated with smoother, polished urban styles, Geddins’ most memorable records often were raw excursions into desolation and gloom—“Tin Pan Alley” by Roy Hawkins being a prime example. His productions reflected the influences and tastes of many Black workers and musicians who migrated to the Bay Area for jobs during and after the war from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Most of Lowell Fulson’s early records were cut for Geddins, who also recorded Jimmy McCracklin, Roy Hawkins, K.C. Douglas, Johnny Fuller, L.C. “Good Rockin’” Robinson, Mercy Dee Walton, Juke Boy Bonner, Saunders King, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Big Mama Thornton, and many gospel groups. The records often spotlighted the guitar exploits of Lafayette Thomas, Ulysses James or Johnny Heartsman.
Robert Lee Geddins was born on February 6, 1913, in Highbank, Texas, near Marlin (onetime home of fellow 2025 Blues Hall of Fame inductee Blind Willie Johnson). He had heard the blues on records and at Saturday night suppers before he hopped a westbound train in the 1930s. He saw an opportunity to market music in the Bay Area after starting out in Los Angeles, where he worked at a drug store and for the city’s streets department before opening a record store. He began recording in 1945 at Bay Area radio stations and over the years operated record stores, repair shops, studios and pressing plants from several business locations. His earliest releases included the Rising Star Gospel Singers, Fulson, and his own vocal blues “Irma Jean Blues,” named after his wife. He owned or partnered in various record labels, including Down Town, Cava-Tone, Big Town, Rhythm, Irma, Art-Tone, Plaid, Check, Shirley, Vel, Veltone, Gedinson’s and Wax, and made deals to release his songs or productions on other labels—Trilon, Gilt Edge, Swing Time, Modern, Specialty, Aladdin and Chess/Checker among them.
McCracklin had the biggest hit with “Just Got to Know” on Art-Tone in 1961, while other records that charted nationally included Sugar DeSanto’s “I Want to Know” (1960), Jimmy Wilson’s “Tin Pan Alley” (1953), Fulson’s “Three O’Clock Blues” (1948), and Roy Hawkins’ Modern sides “Why Do Things Happen to Me” (1950) and “The Thrill Is Gone” (1951). The latter three were all later recorded by B.B. King, and other Geddins productions or compositions likewise gained more fame through cover versions. The Steve Miller Band and Alan Jackson scored with K.C. Douglas’ “Mercury Boogie” and Jumpin’ Gene Simmons hit the pop charts with “Haunted House,” which Johnny Fuller had waxed as a rock ‘n’ roll novelty in 1958 for Specialty. Fuller and Geddins also came up with “Johnny Ace’s Last Letter,” which only made the charts when covered by Johnny Moore’s Blazers, and “Fool’s Paradise,” recorded by Charles Brown and Mose Allison. Buddy Guy’s Chess single “My Time After While” is much better known than the original Tiny Powell version on Geddins’ Wax label. Geddins had paid little attention to writing and publishing rights when he began but was able to file 74 compositions with BMI over the years. McCracklin and Geddins disputed each other’s authorship of various songs but worked together for years. McCracklin taught piano to Geddins’ son Bob Jr. and brought him into his band, and the junior Geddins participated in recording sessions with many artists.
Although he profited from occasional hits, too many business arrangements resulted in Geddins’ loss of money, master tapes, or song rights. He rarely had the cash to build and promote his would-be music empire—especially when he had a wife and 13 children to support. Record-keeping was not a strong suit either, and piecing together a definitive chronology of his massive output has posed a task for puzzled discographers and historians. But the musical legacy he left was singularly impressive. Lowell Fulson recalled, “Bob Geddins would bring out the best in an artist. If you had talent he’d draw it out of you. He taught me how to rephrase the blues and how to breathe properly.”
Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records compiled some of Geddins’ quintessential gutbucket blues productions on an “Oakland Blues” LP in 1970. JSP and other labels have issued more extensive CD anthologies in the years since, showcasing blues of both hardcore and more contemporary varieties, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, R&B and novelty material such as a song by “The Mystery Man” (Geddins himself) taking on an Italian accent on “Loueggie Blues.”
Geddins’ work stands as an enduring legacy of the days when Oakland’s 7th Street was a vibrant center of Black business and nightlife, overflowing with musical talent. Geddins, who was awarded a key to the city in 1983, is honored with a plaque on the 7th Street Walk of Fame. He died on February 16, 1991, of liver cancer, still recovering from a stabbing suffered when was robbed while cashing a royalty check.
The Blues Foundation’s 2025 Blues Hall of Fame Inductees
Performers
Bob Stroger
William Bell
Blind William Jefferson
Henry Townsend
Jessie Mae Hemphill
Individuals – Business, Production, Media, Academic:
Bob Geddins
Classic of Blues Literature
Woman With Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues
Classic of Blues Recording – Album
Lightnin’ Hopkins – “Gold Star Sessions”
Classics of Blues Recording – Single or Album Track
Irma Thomas – “Don’t Mess With Man” (Ron, 1959)
Sylvester Weaver – “Guitar Rag” (okEH, 1923)
Bessie Smith – “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” (Columbia, 1923)
Blind Lemon Jefferson – “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” (Paramount, 1927)
B.B. King – “Why I Sing The Blues” (ABC Bluesway, 1969)
MORE ABOUT THE BLUES FOUNDATION
The Blues Foundation is a world-renowned Memphis-based organization whose mission is to preserve blues heritage, celebrate blues recording and performance, expand worldwide awareness of the blues, and ensure the future of this uniquely American art form. Founded in 1980, the Foundation has approximately 4,000 individual members and 180 affiliated blues societies representing another 50,000 fans and professionals worldwide.
The BF’s signature honors and events — the Blues Music Awards, Blues Hall of Fame Inductions, International Blues Challenge, and Keeping the Blues Alive Awards — make it the international hub of blues music. Its HART Fund provides the blues community with medical assistance for musicians in need, while Blues in the Schools programs and Generation Blues Scholarships expose new generations to blues music. The Blues Hall of Fame Museum, located in Downtown Memphis, adds the opportunity for blues lovers of all ages to interact with blues music and history.