From the North Sea Jazz Festival to the San Francisco Blues Festival, BOB HALL has taken his unique brand of blues and boogie woogie all over the world for more than forty years.

Born in London in 1942 into a musical family, his powerful left hand gave him a natural aptitude for boogie woogie, and by his early teens he was leading his first band. The popularity of rhythm’n’blues in the 1960s first brought him to public attention, and gave him an unrivalled opportunity to play and study with many of the giants of blues and boogie . A list of Bob’s musical colleagues reads like a who’s who of British Blues; he partnered the late Alexis Korner over many years and performed regularly with the great bottleneck bluesman Dave Kelly and his sadly missed sister, Jo Ann Kelly. He was a founder member of several seminal British blues bands including The Groundhogs, Tramp, The Sunflower Blues Band and The De Luxe Blues Band and still found time to work and record with legendary artists such as Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Mick Fleetwood, of the super-group Fleetwood Mac. Bob was also a long serving member of the highly influential British blues band Savoy Brown, which had chart success in the USA. He is still a guest with the finest British blues ensemble The Blues Band, featuring Paul Jones, Dave Kelly and Tom McGuinness. Over the ensuing years Bob’s own boogie woogie big band, which later became Rocket 88, included Hal Singer, Don Weller and Dick Morrissey among many leading jazzmen, together with Charlie Watts and Ian Stewart of the Rolling Stones, Alexis Korner, and Jack Bruce from Cream.

Away from the blues-rock field, Bob developed his confident grasp of the tradition and his authentic style by working as a sideman accompanying such blues originals as John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Witherspoon, Chuck Berry, Homesick James, Lightnin’ Slim, Lowell Fulsom, Charlie Musselwhite, Snooky Prior, J B Hutto, Lazy Lester, Baby Boy Warren, Eddie Burns, Eddie Taylor, Big John Wrencher, Mickey Baker, Eddie Clearwater and many, many more. In all Bob has recorded over a hundred albums, with some of the world’s greatest blues artists. A very high proportion of these are still in catalogue. His solo albums include two classic boogie woogie piano collections and many others featuring his wry, down-home vocals and original compositions. As an acknowledged authority on blues and boogie woogie piano, Bob has contributed to a number of magazines and books and is the sleeve-note writer for Yazoo Records piano blues series. He is currently working on the piano sections of The Routledge Encyclopaedia of the Blues.