"I started gravitating toward the blues in about 1969," says 60-year-old vocalist Shirley King. "What happened was I'd moved to Chicago from California -- I'd been staying with my dad and came back to stay with my mom -- and I was supposed to be getting married to a boyfriend I'd been liking ever since I was small. So I pretty much followed him here to Chicago to get married ... and he decided he'd had a change of mind, and wanted to marry my girlfriend.
"So I think that must've pushed me over to the blues!" exclaims King, with a deep laugh, during our recent phone interview. "Because, man, I got it then!"
Did she ever. For nearly 20 years now, the Chicago-based King has been a staple at area blues clubs; a popular touring artist who has performed in Canada, Italy, France, and even Iceland; and a darling of blues fans and critics, with Prevue magazine describing her as "a musical gem" and the Web site MNBlues.com lauding, "King sings with passion, energy, and power."
But what's surprising about King's reminiscence is that she didn't get the blues before that heartbreak of her youth, considering that her dad is the King of the Blues himself -- B.B. King.
