Blues Queen Koko Taylor dies at 80
Blues queen Koko Taylor dies at 80
Blues queen Koko
Taylor has died at the age of 80 after complications from surgery, her
record label announced Thursday. Taylor died Wednesday at the
Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago two weeks after undergoing an
operation aimed at stopping gastrointestinal bleeding, said a statement
from her record company Alligator Records.
Though not widely
known to mainstream music fans, Taylor had a five-decade stint at the
top of the blues music scene thanks to her powerful voice and
relentless energy, which saw her nominated seven times for a Grammy,
winning once in 1984.
Her most acclaimed work included songs like Wang Dang Doodle, What Kind of Man is This and I Got What It Takes.
Born
to a sharecropper family near Memphis, Tennessee in 1928, she was
orphaned at age 11 and rose to prominence in the early 1960s after
moving to Chicago. During the course of her career, Taylor released 18
albums. Her last performance was in May at the Blues Music Awards.