Biography
Doctor Ross (October 21, 1925 – May 28, 1993), aka Doctor Ross, the harmonica boss, was an American blues singer, guitarist, harmonica player and drummer — a one-man band — who was born Charles Isaiah Ross, in Tunica, Mississippi.
Ross played various forms of the blues that have seen him compared to John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson I, and is perhaps best known for the recordings he made for Sun Records in the 1950s, notably "The Boogie Disease" and "Chicago Breakdown". Ross won a Grammy for his 1981 LP Rare Blues, and subsequently enjoyed a resurgence and much critical acclaim towards the end of his career.
In 1951 he began to be heard on Mississippi and Arkansas radio stations, now nicknamed Doctor because of his habit of carrying his harmonicas in a black bag that resembled a doctor's bag, and over the next three years recorded in Memphis, Tennessee for both Chess Records and Sun Records, creating exhilarating harmonica or guitar boogies made disctinctive by his sidemen playing washboard (with a spoon and fork) and broom.
In 1954 he took a job with General Motors in Flint, Michigan, and played less. Some singles, among them his first true one-man band effort, "Industrial Boogie", filtered into blues circles, leading to a Testament Records album and a 1965 AFBF booking. While in London he recorded what would be the first LP on Blue Horizon Records. Europe loved Ross and gave him work and recording opportunities; he was never as popular at home, and in the 1980s his performing profile was barely visible.
He died in 1993, at the age of 67, and was buried in Flint, Michigan.
From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Ross
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