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Artist
Grady Champion
12+ albums
bluesharmonicaharmonica bluesguitarbluesrock
about
Guitarist, singer, harmonica player and songwriter Grady Champion has been compared to Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Lionel Ritchie and Smokie Robinson. He has released two very impressive recordings, in 1999 and 2001 for Shanachie Records. Both his debut, "Payin' For My Sins" and "2 Days Short of a Week" put Champion on the national touring blues map and helped launch his career beyond the boundaries of his native Jackson, Mississippi. Grady Champion’s biography reads like a TV movie. Starting his musical career in the early 1990s as a rapper named MC Gold, he changed his style when he discovered the blues. Immersing himself in the music of the major blues artists of the past, most notably Sonny Boy Williamson (the Rice Miller one), whom he acknowledges as his greatest influence, Champion eventually became a more than capable blues artist. You’d never guess he hasn’t spent his whole life playing this music. Champion was the youngest of his father's 28 children, and he grew up in rural Canton, outside of Jackson. Raised on a farm, hard work became a way of life for Champion. Like so many other blues performers, he joined his church choir as an eight-year old and began singing gospel. Then at 15, his mother moved the family to Miami, Florida, where he attended high school for a year before heading back home to Mississippi for his senior year. After he was graduated, he returned to Florida where he tried boxing, being a radio DJ and several other occupations before
