Robert Lee McCollum (30 November 1909 – 5 November 1967) was an American bluesman who played and recorded under the names Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk.



Born in Helena, Arkansas, he left home at an early age to become a busking musician, and after a period wandering through southern Mississippi settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee. There he played with local orchestras and musicians, such as the Memphis Jug Band. A particular influence was Houston Stackhouse, from whom he learnt to play slide guitar, and with whom he appeared on the radio in Jackson, Mississippi.
Contents

* 1 Robert Lee McCoy
* 2 Robert Nighthawk
* 3 Recordings
* 4 Sources and external links

Robert Lee McCoy

After further travels through Mississippi, he found it advisable to take his mother's name, and as Robert Lee McCoy he moved to St. Louis, Missouri. Local musicians with whom he played included Henry Townsend, Big Joe Williams, and Sonny Boy Williamson. This led to two recording dates in 1937, the four musicians recording together at the Victor Records studio in Aurora, Illinois, as well as recordings under his own name, including "Prowling Night-Hawk" (recorded 5 May 1937), from which he was take his later pseudonym.

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Big Joe Williams (born Joseph Lee Williams, October 16, 1903 - December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues musician and songwriter, known for his characteristic style of guitar-playing, his nine-string guitar, and his bizarre, cantankerous personality.
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Career

Born in Crawford, Mississippi, as a youth Williams began wandering across the United States busking and playing stores, bars, alleys and work camps. In the early 1920s he worked in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels revue, and recorded with the Birmingham Jug Band in 1930 for the Okeh label.

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Otis Spann (March 21, 1930 – April 24, 1970 [1]) was an American blues musician. Many aficionados considered him then, and now, as Chicago's leading postwar blues pianist.[2]
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Career

Born in Jackson, Mississippi[3], Spann became known for his distinct piano style.

Spann began playing piano by age of eight, influenced by his local ivories stalwart, Friday Ford. At 14, he was playing in bands around Jackson, finding more inspiration in the 78s of Big Maceo Merriweather, who took the young pianist under his wing once Spann migrated to Chicago in 1946. Spann gigged on his own, and with guitarist Morris Pejoe, before hooking up with Muddy Waters in 1952.

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Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906 in Elmar, Arkansas – July 17, 1983 in New Orleans, Louisiana) was an American blues musician also known as "Honeydripper".

He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player who influenced blues piano playing with his rollicking thundering boogie.[1]

Career

Sykes grew up near Helena, Arkansas but at age 15, began playing piano with a barrelhouse style of blues at various places until ending up in the St. Louis, Missouri area where he met St. Louis Jimmy Oden. He started recording in the 1920s, signing with multiple labels and recording under various names including "Easy Papa Johnson", "Dobby Bragg", and "Willie Kelly". After he and Oden moved to Chicago he found his first period of great fame when he signed with Decca Records in 1935. In 1943, he signed to Bluebird Records and recorded with "The Honeydrippers".

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