Peaches Staten is a world-class entertainer who is known for spreading the joy of blues. One week she is in Europe, the next in South America, back to the states then off again at the drop of an e-mail to some corner of the world.  Peaches was born in Doddsville, MS, but grew up in the thriving Chicago Blues scene and was raised on gospel, blues and soul.  Her stepfather was a disc jockey for several of Chicago’s swank Westside clubs and her mother was a member of a social club that hosted parties for well-known blues musicians. She began her professional career in a zydeco band and an Afro Brazilian Samba ensemble and has gone on to work with the best that the Blues scene has to offer. She’s a little bit of Tina, Etta and Koko all in one.  Her gutsy, growling and energetic show has made her one of the foremost headliners on the Chicago blues scene.  Peaches  Staten has shared the stage and recorded with some of the best in the business such as Katie Webster, C.J. Chernier, Johnny B. Moore, the late Buddy Scott, Billy Branch, Carl Weathersby and others.  Early in her career she was featured in Women in Blues Revues with Chicago veterans Bonnie Lee and Karen Carroll.  Her untamed energy electrifies the audience never failing to get them on their feet.  She is a talented performer who possesses an impeccable rhythmic and musical style.

Maurice John Vaughn is a guitarist, saxophonist, keyboardist and singer. He began playing professionally in 1968 as a saxophonist in Chicago R&B groups. He recorded with The Chosen Few in 1976, and played and recorded with Phil Guy, went on tour in Canada in 1979. He played as a sideman with Luther Allison, Son Seals, Junior Wells, Valerie Wellington, and A.C. Reed.  His debut solo record was 1984's Generic Blues Album, released in plain white packaging on his own Reecy Records record label; Alligator Records reissued it in 1987.^[2] In the 1990s, Vaughn played with Detroit Junior, but spent much of his time working in A&R for Appaloosa Records, and produced albums by Shirley Johnson, Zoom, Maxine Carr, B.J. Emery, and Velvet McNair. Vaughn and his band backed up Detroit Junior on the latter's two releases on Blue Suit Records, "Turn Up The Heat" and "Take Out The Time." In 1994, his song "(Everything I Do) Got To Be Funky" was released on the soundtrack for the film Major League II. The song was also a part of his 1993 release, In the Shadow of the City.

Aaron Moreland (guitarist) was born December 16, 1974. He describes their music as "gritty blues and roots rock from the heartland." He played in a number of garage bands while growing up and was influenced by punk music. He changed course and focused on blues music after hearing "Death Letter Blues" by Son House. Dustin Arbuckle (vocalist / Harmonica / blues harp) was born December 25, 1981. He first discovered blues in his mid-teens. "Getting into blues made me want to play music," he says. He played in blues-rock bands while learning to sing with soulful authority. They are backed by drummer Kendall Newby.

The two met at an open mic session in their hometown of Wichita, Kansas in 2001 and they quickly bonded and formed an acoustic duo playing traditional and delta blues. The all acoustic duo saw their start after reaching the finals at the 2005 International Blues Competition in Memphis, Tennessee, and followed that success with their first self-produced album, Caney Valley Blues in 2005.  In 2006 the duo added a drummer and evolved into an electric powerhouse trio. Later that year they released a self-produced independent album, Floyd's Market. The trio forged a path combining rural blues, Delta, Mississippi Hill Country, and rock styles.  They followed in 2008 with 1861 (Northern Blues Music). The trio's sound continued to evolve on this recording with Moreland adding a handmade electric cigar box guitar to his arsenal. Blurt Magazine noted that "Moreland & Arbuckle put the edge back in blues-rock with their big league debut album, 1861" Moreland was further named one of the "10 Blues Legends in the Making" along with Otis Taylor and Davy Knowles. The band traveled to Iraq for nearly two weeks in the fall of 2008 to play for the American troops stationed there.

In 2013, they released 7 Cities (Telarc). It tells the story of Spanish explorer Coronado and his fabled search for the seven cities of gold in the Kansas plains, not far from where the band lives. WNYC's Soundcheck says the band plays "gritty blues with a thoroughly contemporary bite.”^[ American Songwriter says the group's music is "swampy, sweaty and muggy....mixing a bluesy foundation with bits of country, folk and squawking American rock and roll.” 2013 also included tours through the United States, Europe, and the UK.  Living Blues says of Moreland & Arbuckle, “Deeply satisfying...gritty soul and blues with garage overtones and fire-and-brimstone vocals."

The former Pat Rush was born in Meridian, Mississippi. She attended Harris Jr. College, also in Meridian, where she joined a group called The Dynamics which later became The Commodores. As a child, her Idols and babysitters were Al Wilson (Show & Tell), David Ruffin and Jimmy Ruffin "who all pushed or inspired me to continue to sing and work hard" says Brown. After college she moved to Jackson, Mississippi where she began her recording career. She struck gold on her first album with the great "Equal Opportunity" which has become a southern soul anthem and her signature song. 

Early Years
Eddie Shaw was born March 20, 1937, in Benoit, Mississippi, and grew up in nearby Greenville, where his adolescent friends included a number of musicians who would one day become fellow Chicago bluesmen, such as Little Milton Campbell, Left Hand Frank Craig, Johnny “Big Moose” Walker and L.V. Banks.  He and his close companion Oliver Sain were just two of the many blues and jazz horn players to come from Coleman High School.  They joined other formally trained musicians in Greenville’s sophisticated, urban jump-blues bands, which featured four- and five-man horn sections.  Shaw and Sain made the rounds of the local nightclubs, schools, and dances, and often traveled through the Delta to play with bands such as Ike Turner’s and Guitar Slim’s.  Shaw, who played trombone and clarinet before switching to saxophone, also put in some time with more traditional local bluesmen like Sain’s stepfather, Willie Love, and guitarist Charles Booker.  

Chicago
In 1957, Shaw sat in with the Muddy Waters band in Itta Bena, Mississippi.  Waters hired him on the spot and Eddie arrived in Chicago as a member of the top band in town.  The Chicago bands of Waters and Howlin' Wolf were built around amplified country blues, and Shaw found that he had to play differently in Chicago from the way he had in Mississippi.  He was usually the only horn player in the band and no longer had section arrangements or short, set parts to play, but he adapted to the new demands as a soloist.  He spent a few months with Waters, a few months with Wolf, went back to Greenville for a short stay, and then settled in Chicago for good.  He rejoined Wolf for about two years, moved on to the Otis Rush band, and during the ‘60s worked most often with Magic Sam on the West Side.  In between, there were plenty of weekend gigs with any band that needed a sax man for a night or two - “in and out of bands, up and down the highway,” said Shaw.

Shaw sang and fronted his own band from time to time, using guitar players such as Luther “Guitar Jr.” Johnson, Magic Sam, and Jesse Robinson.  He played on recording sessions with Jimmy Dawkins. Freddie King, Magic Sam, Howlin' Wolf, and others, and occasionally took his band into the studio to record dubs for promotional use on jukeboxes and on Big Bill Hill’s local radio and TV programs.  One such recording, an instrumental called “Blues For The West Side,” became a minor Chicago hit when it was issued as a single by Colt Records.  In addition, he wrote songs for  Willie Dixon, Andrew “Blueblood” McMahon, Magic Sam, and Howlin' Wolf, and contributed arrangements to sessions by Waters, Wolf, and others.  Shaw's many contributions to the blues include arranging tracks for The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, which featured Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, Ringo Starr and others.

In the midst of all this, Shaw was usually involved in some sort of independent business venture, such as an air conditioning and refrigeration service, a laundromat, a barbecue joint, and a tavern, which was famed for its all-star Monday jam sessions.  For a number of years, he operated the biggest blues club on the West Side, Eddie’s Place (The New 1815 Club), which featured such top-notch blues acts as Luther Allison, James Cotton, Jimmy Reed, Otis Rush, Little Johnny Taylor, Howlin' Wolf, and Mighty Joe Young.

Besides constantly touring for over two decades, Shaw has continued to record prolifically.  His debut album, Have Blues, Will Travel, was released in 1977 on the Simmons label and later reissued by Rooster Blues.  He cut four sides in 1978 for Alligator’s Living Chicago Blues series with the famed Hubert Sumlin on guitar.  Since then, he’s cut a couple of albums for Rooster Blues, one for the French Isabel label (issued in the USA by Evidence), five for the Austrian Wolf label, and one for Chicago’s own Delmark Records.

Fruteland Jackson (born June 9, 1953) is an American electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Henry Townsend stated, "My respect for Fruteland Jackson is very high. He and my boy Alvin Youngblood Hart is the future sound of true acoustic blues." He has also worked with children to raise awareness of blues music and has been honored for his work in that field, including in 1997 being granted a W. C. Handy Award for "Keeping the Blues Alive" in Education. Jackson was born in Doddsville, Mississippi, the son of an insurance underwriter, and he relocated with his family to Chicago in the 1960s in order to secure better employment and education outlooks. His father was employed by North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, and his mother worked as a nurse at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. He received his first guitar from his uncle when aged 12, and played in high school band before receiving further education at Roosevelt University. Jackson got married and worked as a private investigator then for the Illinois Department of Human Rights. By the mid 1980s, Jackson had relocated to Biloxi, Mississippi. His wholesale seafood business, Camel Seafood Company, was destroyed by Hurricane Elena and Jackson immersed himself in blues music, inspired by the work of William R. Ferris. He learnt the music of Johnny Shines, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and the earlier Robert Johnson songs, with the view of working as an educator, activist and musician.

Jackson has appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival and Boundary Waters Blues Festival, as well as working in schools across the United States. He perfected two presentation styles to educate children about blues music, and he was known as Mr. Fruteland by those who he taught. Jackson worked with the Blues Foundation to create a teaching program called "All About the Blues". In 1996 the Illinois Arts Council granted him their Folk/Ethnic Heritage Award. The Blues Foundation followed by naming Jackson as a recipient of their 'Keeping the Blues Alive Award.

In 1999 he published the educational book, Guitar Roots: Delta Blues - The roots of great guitar playing. He has also penned a one-act play entitled, The Life and Times of Robert Johnson. Also in 1999, Jackson was signed to a recording contract by Electro-Fi Records I Claim Nothing But the Blues (2000), was followed by Blues 2.0 (2003). The latter was nominated for a W. C. Handy Award, and the magazine, Blues Revue named it "one of the finest blues albums of this young decade." Tell Me what You Say was Jackson's latest album release in 2006.

Sam Lay (born March 20, 1935, Birmingham, Alabama) is an American drummer and vocalist who has been performing since the late 1950s. Lay began his career in 1957, as the drummer for the Original Thunderbirds. He soon after became the drummer for the harmonica player Little Walter.

In the early 1960s, Lay began recording and performing with prominent blues musicians, including Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Eddie Taylor, John Lee Hooker, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley, Magic Sam, Jimmy Rogers, Earl Hooker, and Muddy Waters. The recordings Lay made during this time, along with Waters's album Fathers and Sons, recorded in 1969, are considered to be among the definitive works of Waters and Wolf.^]

In the mid-1960s, Lay joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and recorded and toured extensively with them. Bob Dylan used Lay as his drummer when he introduced electric rock at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Lay also recorded with Dylan, notably on the album Highway 61 Revisited (Lay drummed on the track "Highway 61"; the drummer on most of the other tracks was Bobby Gregg). Lay's drumming can be heard on over 40 recordings for Chess Records, with many notable blues performers. He toured the major blues festivals in the US and Europe with the Chess Records All-Stars.

In the late 1980s Lay was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, in Memphis. He has also been inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame, in Los Angeles, and the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland. He was nominated eight times for the coveted W. C. Handy Award for Best Instrumentalist, including a nomination in 2005.

Lay made two albums with his own band, released by Appaloosa Records and Evidence Records, and two recordings for Alligator Records with the Siegel-Schwall Band.^[1] His own album, Sam Lay in Bluesland, released in 1969 by Blue Thumb Records, was produced by Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites.

He was nominated in 2000 for a Grammy Award for his performances on the CD Howlin' Wolf Tribute. He was honored by the Recording Academy in January 2002 with a Legends and Heroes Award for his significant musical contributions. He was prominently featured in the PBS television documentary History of the Blues, broadcast in seven episodes, produced by the Academy Award–winning director Martin Scorsese. Lay shot many home movies of fellow blues performers in small Chicago venues in the late 1950s and 1960s. parts of which were included in History of the Blues and the WTTW television production Record Row, by the filmmaker Michael MacAlpin. Lay was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, in 2015.

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Mark Paul "Corky" Siegel (born October 24, 1943) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and composer. He plays harmonica and piano. He plays and writes blues and blues-rock music, and has also worked extensively on combining blues and classical music. He is best known as the co-leader of the Siegel-Schwall Band, and as the leader of the Chamber Blues group. Corky Siegel's professional music career began in 1964, when he met guitarist Jim Schwall. Both were studying music at Roosevelt University in Chicago. The two became a duo, performing blues music. They landed a regular gig at Pepper's Lounge, where well known, established blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Willie Dixon would often sit in. After a while the duo became a quartet, the Siegel-Schwall Band.

The Siegel-Schwall Band enjoyed increasing popularity, and by 1967 were touring nationally, playing at large rock venues like the Fillmore West and sharing the bill with famous rock bands. Between 1966 and 1974, they released ten albums. After 1974, they stopped playing concerts, but the band re-formed in 1987. They still play occasional live dates and have released two albums of new material.^[7] The band currently features drummer Sam Lay and bassist Rollo Radford; Lay played with Siegel in the Happy Year Band of 1973 which also featured Chicago blues guitarist Albert Joseph.

The idea of combining blues and classical music was first suggested by classical conductor Seiji Ozawa. Ozawa brought together the Siegel-Schwall Band and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They first performed "Three Pieces for Blues Band and Symphony Orchestra", by William Russo in 1968. In 1973, the band and Ozawa released a recording of this work performed with the San Francisco Symphony. In 1975, Siegel and Ozawa, with the San Francisco Symphony, first performed another William Russo work, "Street Music: A Blues Concerto". A recording of this piece was released in 1979.

Inspired by his collaboration with Ozawa, Corky Siegel formed Chamber Blues in 1988. The group's music combines elements of classical, blues, and jazz. The band consists of a string quartet – two violins, a viola, and a cello – along with a percussionist Frank Donaldson, Siegel on harmonica, and sometimes doubling on piano. Chamber Blues is still together. The group has toured nationally and has released three albums.

Siegel has also worked on numerous other musical projects. In 2004, he was a member of a band called the Chicago Blues Reunion, which released the album Buried Alive in the Blues.

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Marcella Detroit is an American soprano vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter. She released her debut album Marcella in 1982 to little success before she joined Shakespears Sister with ex-Bananarama member Siobhan Fahey. Detroit sang the lead vocals on their biggest hit, "Stay", which was number one in the United Kingdom for eight consecutive weeks. Since leaving the band in 1993, Detroit has maintained a successful solo career, and from 2002 to 2007 fronted her own self-titled blues band.