Died On This Date (December 8, 1986) Hollywood Fats / Blues Guitarist; Played In The Blasters
themusicsover Hollywood Fats (Born Michael Mann)
May 17, 1954 – December 8, 1986
Hollywood Fats was a respected Los Angeles blues guitarist who began playing when he was just ten years old. As a side man, he played with the likes of Canned Heat, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Albert King. Fats also fronted his own band who released an album in 1979. In 1986, he joined the Blasters, replacing the recently departed Dave Alvin. Later that year, Hollywood Fats died of a heroin overdose at the age of 32.
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 
Robert Lee McCollum was a blues guitarist who for some reason changed his name at least twice during his music career. During the mid ’30s, he went by Robert Lee McCoy and landed in St. Louis where he played and recorded with 
Son House was a pioneering Delta blues musician who was an immediate influence on the likes of 
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