C.T. Tucker (Born Christopher Harshorne)
DOB Unknown – January 19, 2010
Photo by Alison Goessling
C.T. Tucker was a popular northwestern New Jersey R&B band leader and restaurateur. His band, Blue Sparks From Hell, formed in 1977 and played upwards of 250 shows a year while occasionally sharing the bill with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mel Tillis, Doc Watson,Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters. The band was a local favorite thanks to its lively shows that incorporated blues, R&B and swing. During the ’90s, Tucker opened Tucker’s Breakfast King which served breakfast and lunch during the day, and then re-opened as a venue in the evenings. Acts such as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Loudon Wainwright III graced its stage. In later years, Tucker and his wife ran an animal casting business which provided critters for film and television. On January 19, 2010, C.T. Tucker died of lymphoma at the age of 57.
Big Walter Horton was a Mississippi-born blues harmonica player who is considered to be one of the blues’ most influential musicians. Horton’s career began in the late ’20s and by 1939, he began making records, the first of which, backed by guitarist, Little Buddy Doyle. He all but retired from the music business during the ’40s, but in the early ’50s, he became one of Sam Phillips’ first signings to his fledgling Sun Records. Horton soon moved north to Chicago where he became a fixture over the next two decades. There he performed or recorded with the likes of Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, and Willie Dixon and was memorialized in the acclaimed Vanguard Records survey of Chicago blues, Chicago/The Blues/Today!. He also lent his skills to early rock recordings by Fleetwood Mac and Johnny Winter. Horton continued performing and recording throughout the ’70s and even appeared in a scene alongside John Lee Hooker in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers, starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Big Walter Horton was 64 when he died of heart failure on December 1, 1981.
Mae Mercer was an actress and blues singer who spent most of her music career singing in Paris. With a richly deep voice, she sang what Willie Dixon once called, “the real low-down blues.” She fronted a band that included Memphis Slim for the better part of the ’60s. Back in America during the ’70s, Mercer put her focus on acting. She appeared in the films, Dirty Harry, The Beguiled, and Pretty Baby, and such TV shows as Mannix, and Kung Fu. Mae Mercer, 76, passed away in her home after having been ill for some time.
Leonard Chess (Born Lejzor Czyz)
March 12, 1917 – October 16, 1969
Born in Poland, a young (and not yet called) Leonard Chess moved with his family to Chicago in 1928. Leonard and his brother Phil got into the music business by way of the Macomba Lounge, a popular Black club they took over in 1946. Shortly thereafter, Leonard began working with a local jazz and black label called Aristocrat Records. He and his brother eventually took it over and began changing its focus to the down and dirty sound of the blues they had fallen in love with. By the time they were done, they had made seminal records with the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James and Koko Taylor, to name just a handful. In the early ’60s, Chess purchased a couple of radio station, and in 1969, he sold Chess Records. He died of a heart attack just a few months later.