John "blues" Boyd at Harlow's Momo Lounge

John “Blues” Boyd earned his middle name the hard way. John’s music and the man himself are throwbacks to a more difficult, but also a more honest and straightforward era. Cousin to bluesman Eddie Boyd, John was born in Greenwood, MS, in 1945 and began working the delta cotton fields at seven years of age. Until he retired from hot tar roofing in 2007 to care for his ailing wife, blues singing and hard labor were the two constants in his life.

When his beloved wife of 49 years Dona Mae, passed in 2014, John naturally turned to the refuge of the blues for solace. In dealing with his grief, John discovered a previously undeveloped talent for songwriting and found himself furiously churning out songs – Sometimes writing as many as eight in a single day!...

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John “Blues” Boyd earned his middle name the hard way. John’s music and the man himself are throwbacks to a more difficult, but also a more honest and straightforward era. Cousin to bluesman Eddie Boyd, John was born in Greenwood, MS, in 1945 and began working the delta cotton fields at seven years of age. Until he retired from hot tar roofing in 2007 to care for his ailing wife, blues singing and hard labor were the two constants in his life.

When his beloved wife of 49 years Dona Mae, passed in 2014, John naturally turned to the refuge of the blues for solace. In dealing with his grief, John discovered a previously undeveloped talent for songwriting and found himself furiously churning out songs – Sometimes writing as many as eight in a single day!

With a stylistic range at times reminiscent of shouters like Big Joe Turner and Wynonnie Harris and other times harkening back to blues crooners like Junior Parker and an early BB King, John delivers these songs on this new album, THE REAL DEAL with sweetness, ferocity, pure old-school charm and always, unfiltered honesty.
In an era when Halloween “bluesmen” christen themselves with what they imagine to be colorful, authentic-sounding “blues” pseudonyms, John “Blues” Boyd and his name are indisputably The Real Deal.

-Rick Estrin

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