Grady Champion is a bluesman on the rise

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Grady Champion is a bluesman on the rise
April 13, 2010
Mitch McCracken
Examiner.com

I caught Fox 13’s Good Morning Memphis the other day and saw a great new artist named Grady Champion and he is a bluesman on the rise. Grady is a blues singer, harmonica player, guitarist and songwriter. I got a chance to sit down and talk to him last week.

I love it when I can come across new artist like Grady. The first thing that strikes you about him is his charisma and likeability. He looks you in the eye and speaks from his heart. He comes across so sincere and down to earth; I haven’t seen that in many artists, hell not that many people for that matter. He is a Christian who wants to project an image of respectability into his music, a clean cut bluesman and a snappy dresser.

I found out in short order that Grady Champion is anything but a new artist. He started out almost twenty years ago as a Blues Rapper…I know, I never heard of a Blues Rapper either. Someone pointed out to him that he had a raspy voice and that he would make a better blues singer than a rapper. He thought about that for a while and decided to give it a shot. He knew as a young man that you can’t just sing the blues; you have to feel the blues, live the blues. He had a great sense of who he was and where he wanted to go. He knew he would be forty years old before he could perfect what he wanted to do. He was cool with that. So many artists want to be on top yesterday, but like a fine wine or a slow smoked ham, it takes time to reach perfection. Grady is ready to pop the cork now and enjoy where his experiences have taken him.

Like almost all blues greats Grady is from the state of Mississippi, the small town of Canton in his case. He later moved to Florida. In 1998 he recorded Goin' Back Home and drew such large crowds to Florida blues clubs he caught the attention of Shanachie Records executives, who signed him.

The album includes a version of "Don't Start Me To Talkin'" that really shows Grady's high energy singing and harmonica playing and an updated version of the traditional mournful "Goin' Down Slow" with an updated AIDS storyline, a hard-edged story of modern life. "You Got Some Explaining to Do" (co-written by his producer Dennis Walker, who helped Robert Cray reach national fame) demonstrates that Grady is an important new talent.

Grady told me he was heavily influenced by blues great Sonny Boy Williamson who was not only a great harp player but also gave other blues artist a break on his radio show on KWEM Radio in West Memphis, Arkansas. According to Dave McIntyre, BLUES ACCESS magazine, Summer 1996 issue, his excellent singing ability has been compared to other blues greats like Robert Johnson. He can also work the crowd like Johnson or Luther Allison. You can see the influence of Sonny Boy in Grady’s performances; in fact his harp playing has been compared to that of Sonny Boy (1999’s Payin’ for My Sins).

What makes Grady Champion such a stand out is that he doesn’t just cover other blues artist songs, he writes his own material too. When he does sing other’s songs it is never lick for lick the same as the original, as Simon Cowell would say, he makes it his own.

Grady was the winner of the Blues Foundation 2010 International Blues Challenge. He did it by being one of the few acts that played his own material, he had them dancing in aisles at the Orpheum Theatre during the finals. He was in a field of over a hundred acts.

As nice and polite as Grady is, he has no trouble speaking his mind as he did when he wrote songs like "Policeman Blues" (about racial profiling) and "Children of the Corn," a song about the rising tide of youth violence. Champion is one of the best when it comes to the future of blues music.

BB King is the reigning King of the Blues but when his reign is over I wouldn’t be surprised to see the throne taken over by a blues harp player named Grady Champion.