Died On This Date (January 19, 2010) C.T. Tucker / Beloved New Jersey Blues Musician
themusicsover C.T. Tucker (Born Christopher Harshorne)
DOB Unknown – January 19, 2010
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.
Thanks to Diane Schaer for the assist.
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 
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 
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