Heralded as “a living landmark” (
Berkeley
Express), “a national treasure” (Guitar Extra), and “one of the greatest living
acoustic blues artists” (Blues Revue), Rory Block has committed her life and
her career to preserving the Delta blues tradition and bringing it to life for
21st century audiences around the world. A traditionalist and an innovator at
the same time, she wields a fiery and haunting guitar and vocal style that
redefines the boundaries of acoustic blues and folk. The New York Times declared:
“Her playing is perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts,
shadows and legends.”
Born in
Princeton,
NJ,
Aurora “Rory” Block
grew up in
Manhattan
a family with Bohemian leanings. Her father owned a
Greenwich
Village sandal shop, where musicians like Bob Dylan, Maria
Muldaur and John Sebastian all made occasional appearances. The rich and
diverse Village scene was a constant influence on her cultural sensibilities.
She was playing guitar by age ten, and by her early teens she was sitting in on
the Sunday jam sessions in
WashingtonSquarePark.
During these years, her life was touched – and profoundly changed – by personal
encounters with some of the earliest and most influential Delta blues masters
of the 20th century. She made frequent visits to the
Bronx,
where she learned her first lessons in blues and gospel music from the Reverend
Gary Davis. She swapped stories and guitar licks with seminal bluesman Son
House, Robert Johnson’s mentor (“He kept asking, ‘Where did she learn to play
like this?’”). She visited Skip James in the hospital after his cancer surgery.
She traveled to
Washington,
DC,
to visit with
Mississippi
John Hurt and absorb first-hand his technique and his creativity.
“This period seemed to last forever,” Block Recalls nearly forty years later.”
I now realize how lucky I was to be there, in the right place at the right
time. I thought everyone knew these incredible men, these blues geniuses who
wrote the book. I later realized how fleeting it was, and how even more precious.”
By the time she was in high school, her family had splintered in different
directions. With nothing holding her down, she left home at 15 with her guitar
and a few friends – heading for
California
on a trip marked by numerous detours and stops in small towns. Along he way,
she picked her way through a vast catalog of country blues songs and took her
first steps in developing a fingerpicking and slide guitar style that would
eventually be her trademark.
She recorded an instructional record called How To Play
Blues Guitar in the mid-60s (she was billed as Sunshine Kate on the original
recording), but then took a decade off from music to start a family. In the
mid- and late ‘70s, she made a few records that ran counter to her inherent
blues instincts, and the result was frustration. “Eventually disgusted with
trying to accommodate a business which never seemed to accept me or be
satisfied with my efforts,” she says, “I gave up totally and went back to the
blues.” The result was a record deal with the Boston-based Rounder label, which
released her High Heeled Blues in 1981. Rolling Stone referred to the album as
“some of the most singular and affecting country blues anyone – man or woman,
black or white, old or young – has cut in recent years.”
Back in a groove that felt comfortable and fulfilling, Block threw herself
headlong into an ambitious touring schedule that helped hone her technical and
vocal skills to a razor’s edge, and at the same time nurture a distinctive
voice as a songwriter. She stayed with Rounder for the next two decades, making
records that simultaneously indulged her affinity for traditional country blues
and served as a platform for her own formidable songwriting talents.
The world finally started taking notice in the early 1990s, and Block scored
numerous awards throughout the decade. She brought home W.C. Handy Awards four
years in a row – two for Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year, and two
for Best Acoustic Blues Album of the Year. Her visibility overseas increased
dramatically when Best Blues and Originals, fueled by the single “Lovin'
Whiskey,” went gold in parts of
Europe.
Block joins the Telarc label with the September 2003 release of Last Fair Deal,
a mix of eight original tunes and six compelling covers of early blues and
gospel songs. Last Fair Deal finds Block at the absolute height of her creative
powers, bringing a world full of life lessons to bear on what she calls “a
total celebration of my beloved instrument and best friend, the guitar.”
Rory Block
Heralded as “a living landmark” (
