Jimmy Rogers

Jimmy Rogers (June 3, 1924 – December 19, 1997) was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, best known for his work as a member of Muddy Waters‘s band in the early 1950s.  He also had a solo career and recorded several popular blues songs, including “That’s All Right” (now a blues standard), “Chicago Bound”, “Walking by Myself” (his sole R&B chart appearance), and “Rock This House”.  He withdrew from the music industry at the end of the 1950s, but returned to recording and touring in the 1970s.

Rogers was born Jay or James Arthur Lane in Ruleville, Mississippi, on June 3, 1924. He was raised in Atlanta and Memphis. He adopted his stepfather’s surname. He learned to play the harmonica with his childhood friend Snooky Pryor, and as a teenager he took up the guitar. He played professionally in East St. Louis, Illinois, with Robert Lockwood, Jr., among others. Rogers moved to Chicago in the mid-1940s. By 1946, he had recorded as a harmonica player and singer for the Harlem record label, run by J. Mayo Williams. Rogers’s name did not appear on the record, which was mislabeled as the work of Memphis Slim and His Houserockers.

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