Life and Career
Kelly was born in Streatham, South London, and with her brother, Dave Kelly, became blues fans in their teens.
Kelly had a voice far bigger than her slight frame would suggest; with a rich, deep, tonal quality that could easily have come from Dinah Washington or Sister Rosetta Tharpe. After establishing a musical partnership with the British blues musician Tony McPhee, Kelly appeared on two McPhee compiled albums for Liberty Records, Me and the Devil (1968) and I Asked for Water, She Gave Me Gasoline (1969). She also appeared on two John Dummer Band albums John Dummer Blues Band (1969) and Oobleedoobleejubilee (1973),
At the end of the 1960s, with an album on a major record label in the United States, it seemed that she might be spirited away there and moulded into another Janis Joplin. Both Johnny Winter and Canned Heat tried to recruit Kelly into their ranks. However, her allegiance was to the United Kingdom and the nightclub scene, although, the 1970s and 1980s would fail to support her financially and so she took to the European circuit, latterly with the guitarist Pete Emery or in bands. Indeed, in the early 1980s, she was a member of the Terry Smith Blues Band.
In 1988, Kelly began to suffer from headaches. In 1989 she had an operation to remove a malignant brain tumour. She died in October 1990, at the age of 46.
The latest Kelly compilation album, Blues and Gospel, is available on Blues Matters! Records.
Read more about this topic: Jo Ann Kelly
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“Every life and every childhood is filled with frustrations; we cannot imagine it otherwise, for even the best mother cannot satisfy all her child’s wishes and needs. It is not the suffering caused by frustration, however, that leads to emotional illness, but rather the fact that the child is forbidden by the parents to experience and articulate this suffering, the pain felt at being wounded.”
—Alice Miller (20th century)
“We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)