Koko Taylor – A Complete Biography
Introduction
Koko Taylor—born Cora Ann Walton—rose from Tennessee sharecropper roots to become the undisputed “Queen of the Blues.” With a volcanic, sandpapered voice and a fearless stage presence, she carried the Chicago blues tradition across five decades, from the Chess/Checker years to a career-defining run on Alligator Records. Along the way she turned Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle” into a modern standard, toured relentlessly, weathered harrowing setbacks, and racked up a record number of Blues Music Awards, a Grammy win, and a National Heritage Fellowship. Her story is the story of postwar blues itself: Southern beginnings, a northbound journey, and the electrified sound of Chicago that conquered the world.
Childhood
Cora Ann Walton was born to a family of sharecroppers in Shelby County near Memphis, Tennessee. Music surrounded her early life: spirituals in church, blues at house parties, and homemade instruments at home—she supplied the voice. Family nicknamed her “Koko” for her love of chocolate, a moniker that stuck when she later took bandstands. Accounts differ on her birth year—most major references list 1928, while some blues histories cite 1935—but all agree on her rural Tennessee origins and deep early exposure to gospel and country blues traditions.
Youth
In the early 1950s she married Robert “Pops” Taylor, and in 1952 the couple joined the Great Migration to Chicago with little money but big resolve. By the late 1950s she was singing on South and West Side club stages, working days in domestic jobs and honing her voice at night. The turning point came in 1962 when songwriter-bassist Willie Dixon heard her and opened doors at Chess/Checker, putting her in the orbit of the city’s top players and producers.
Adulthood
Taylor’s Checker single of “Wang Dang Doodle” (1965/66) made her a national name—one of the last Dixon-produced Chicago blues hits to storm the charts. She toured hard through the late ’60s and early ’70s, then relaunched on the independent Alligator label in 1975, where she made a career’s worth of definitive records and built her road machine into an institution. She took home more Blues Music Awards than any artist in history and, in 2004, received the NEA’s National Heritage Fellowship—America’s highest honor for traditional artists. Despite a near-fatal late-1980s vehicle accident and the loss of her husband/manager, she returned to the stage, appeared in films, and even briefly operated a Chicago club bearing her name in the ’90s.
Major Compositions
Although celebrated primarily as an interpreter with a signature rasp and gale-force attack, Taylor also contributed original material. The best-known is “Voodoo Woman,” a swaggering statement she wrote and cut during her Alligator era; the tune became part of her onstage identity and has been covered by later artists. Her albums also regularly featured fresh originals and tailor-made vehicles for that unmistakable voice, sitting comfortably alongside her reinventions of Chicago standards like “I’m a Woman” and “Hey Bartender.”
Death
Koko Taylor gave her final public performance at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis on May 7, 2009—fittingly collecting a record 29th trophy that same week. Later that month she underwent surgery for a gastrointestinal bleed; complications followed, and she died on June 3, 2009, in Chicago at age 80. Tributes poured in across the blues world and from the city she helped define.
Conclusion
Koko Taylor’s legacy is measured in more than awards and chart notches. She embodied the muscle and joy of Chicago blues—loud bands, tougher-than-steel grooves, and a voice that could peel paint yet cradle a heartbreak. From a farmhouse near Memphis to the biggest festival stages, she never dull-edged her sound to fit fashion; instead, she made tradition feel present-tense. Today, the Blues Foundation’s “Traditional Blues Female Artist” prize bears her name, younger singers study her phrasing and fearlessness, and “Wang Dang Doodle” still brings crowds to their feet. The title she claimed onstage remains the truest epitaph: Queen of the Blues.
Comments are closed