Sad news today in the blues world:

Koko Taylor more than once said she hoped that when she died, it would be on stage, doing the thing she loved most: Singing the blues.

She nearly got her wish. The Chicago musical icon died Wednesday at age 80 of complications from gastrointestinal surgery less than four weeks after her last performance, at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, Tenn. There she collected her record 29th Blues Music Award, capping an era in which she became the most revered female blues vocalist of her time with signature hits "Wang Dang Doodle," "I'm a Woman" and "Hey Bartender."

Taylor died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital 15 days after her May 19 surgery. She appeared to be recovering until taking a turn for the worst Wednesday morning, and was with friends and family when she died.

Often called the "Queen of the Blues", Taylor was never one to take many breaks, continuing to perform, record and receive awards throughout her fifty-year long career. Enjoy the Willie Dixon-penned song that was a million-seller for Taylor in 1966 (how many artists have their biggest hit at 38, by the way?!), "Wang Dang Doodle".

From Bill Moyers Journal:

Bill Moyers sits down with Mark Johnson, the producer of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. The film brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.

Johnson traveled around the globe and recorded tracks for such classics as "Stand By Me" and Bob Marley's "One World" — creating a new mix in which essentially the performers are all performing together — worlds apart. Often recording with just battery-powered equipment, Johnson found musicians on street corners or in small clubs and they would in turn gather their friends and colleagues — in all, they recorded over 100 musicians from Tibet to Zimbabwe.

You can read the rest of the story and watch Bill Moyers' interview with Mark Johnson here.

Odetta, widely honored as the "Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" died Tuesday, age 77. When I was a kid infatuated with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez I looked for their roots in the blues and found Odetta. I booked her to play at my college and was blown away by the authenticity of her music.

Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930, in the depths of the Depression. The music of that time and place-- particularly prison songs and work songs recorded in the fields of the Deep South-- shaped her life.

"They were liberation songs," she said in a videotaped interview with the New York Times in 2007 for its online feature "The Last Word." "You're walking down life's road, society's foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can't get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life."

She never had anything like what you would call a hit but her version of this Lead Belly song was something everyone loved around my campus, well, not the Young Republicans, but everyone else.