43rd Annual Blues Music Awards Winner – Soul Blues Male Artist Of The Year!

Award-winning vocalist, instrumentalist and songwriter Curtis Salgado (the man NPR calls “an icon with a huge voice“) is revered worldwide for his ability to wring every ounce of soul out of every song he performs. Salgado is famed not only for his powerhouse live shows and ten previous albums, but also for his passionate and insightful original songs.

 

Former co-leader of The Robert Cray Band, he has been nominated three times for the Blues Music Award for Song Of The Year; winning in 2018 for Walk A Mile In My Blues from The Beautiful Lowdown. In total, he has won nine Blues Music Awards, including the B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year award. In May of this year,  Salgado was named the Soul Blues Male Artist Of The Year by The Blues Foundation. 

 

Salgado was the inspiration behind John Belushi’s creation of the Blues Brothers characters.  They met and became friends while Belushi was Eugene, Oregon filming the movie Animal House. Salgado tutored Belushi for his role in The Blues Brothers. The Blues Brother’s debut album is dedicated to Salgado and Cab Calloway’s character in film is named after Curtis.

 

 
DownBeat calls his songwriting skills “an impressive gift.” Billboard says Salgado’s music is “inspired and powerful.”

 

“Curtis Salgado is the inspiration of my upcoming album, Blues Brothers, and the album is dedicated to him.” John Belushi

 

Curtis Salgado website: https://www.curtissalgado.com

 

Curtis Salgado bio: https://www.curtissalgado.com/band-epk/

 

 

Blues legend and award-winning Twin-Cities performer James Samuel “Cornbread” Harris Sr. was inducted in the Minnesota Blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and won a Sally Award in 2014. A blues singer/pianist/composer, Harris is the father of well-known Hall of Fame music producer Jimmy Jam Harris. Father and son were recently reunited (after 45 years) on our stage as we celebrated Cornbread’s 95thbirthday with a full house of enthusiastic fans and musicians.

On his 90th and 93rd birthdays, Mr. Harris released a pair of Live@TheHook recordings. His much-anticipated holiday recording will be released this fall and his biography (by local writer Andrea Swenson) will be published in the spring of 2023.