CHICAGO Koko Taylor a sharecropper daughter whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the sobriquet Queen of the Blues," has died after complications from surgery. She was 80.
Taylor died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital about two weeks after having surgery for a gastrointestinal bleed, said Marc Lipkin, director of publicity for her record label, Alligator Records, which made the announcement.
Taylor career stretched more than five decades. While she did not have widespread mainstream success, she was revered and beloved by blues aficionados, and earned worldwide acclaim for her work, which including the best-selling song Wang Dang Doodle and tunes such as What Kind of Man is This and I Got What It Takes.
Taylor appeared on national television numerous times, and was the subject of a PBS documentary and had a small part in director David Lynch's Wild at Heart.
In the course of her career Taylor was nominated seven times for Grammy awards and won in 1984.
Born Cora Walton just outside Memphis Tenn Taylor said her dream to become a blues singer was nurtured in the cotton fields outside her family's sharecropper shack.
I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas and he would play the blues," she said in a 1990 interview. "I would hear different records and things by Muddy Waters Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sonnyboy Williams and all these people, you know, which I just loved.
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