Chicago Blues | Chicago, Illinois
This year the blues genre will be well represented by Melody Angel, a gifted guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, vocalist, arranger, and producer from Southside Chicago who is navigating a forward-looking musical path while integrating the legacy of classic blues.
Her music encompasses many American genres, including Rhythm & Blues, Rock, Folk, and Funk, all layered on a strong bed of Chicago blues.
Angel’s music is her own but it is informed by her relative, Chicago blues icon, Otis Rush. Rush, along with Magic Sam and Jimmy Dawkins, helped create the fabled “West Side Sound” in the later 1950s — a sound that heralded a new and innovative blues that embraced R&B and jazz and often incorporated horns.
When Angel started playing guitar at age 15, her mother Stephanie told her about her cousin Otis Rush. As a child, her mother, who is a gifted singer in her own right, enjoyed sleepovers with the Rush children at their home. She recalls Otis jamming in the living room with Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Howlin’ Wolf. She was excited about learning of her famous relative.
Other family members are also gifted musicians. Her mother performed commercial jingles when Angel was young and also did musical theater. “My auntie Tanya, my grandma Yvonne, my great auntie Deb who played the piano, and great auntie Brunetta, all sing gospel songs and soul music,” Angel proudly shares. “Being around amazing singers my whole life always pushed me as a vocalist. I feel I’m always striving to be as good as them.”
Angel started her first band, Melody Angel and the Message in high school. She counts several influential guitarists who have impacted her music. They include, in order of importance, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Slash, Santana, Chuck Berry, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Prince had an oversize effect on Angel after she watched Purple Rain when she was seven. She remembers, “He made the most incredible sounds come out of that guitar, and from that moment on, I wanted to do the same. From age 7 to 15, I begged my mother for a guitar I knew we couldn’t afford. Then one day out of the blue, my mom brought home a purple Fender Stratocaster. The day I got that guitar was the best day of my life and it is still the main guitar I play to this day.”
If you are a Chicago blues artist, the Chicago Blues Festival is a musical goal. For Angel, the fateful year was 2016. Her inaugural festival appearance was a rousing success, and the line to purchase her CDs after the show extended “as far as the eye could see,” Angel fondly recalls. “The love those people showed me that day made all the years of trying to play there worth it.” From that first 2016 appearance, she has played the festival every year, except 2020, when it was canceled due to the Covid pandemic.
The Chicago Blues Festival appearance was helped by the popularity of her regular Thursday night gig at the famous Chicago blues emporium, Rosa’s Lounge. She landed the time slot the previous year.
Angel plays other Windy City venues, always to notable praise. An appearance at Buddy Guy’s Legends set the social media world buzzing, and a fan sent her YouTube video, “In This America,” to the founder of the Byron Bay BluesFest in Australia. The event introduced Angel to an appreciative international audience and put her on the same stage as the other festival performers, including her guitar hero, Carlos Santana, and also Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Beth Hart, and Mary J. Blige. She has since performed in Austria and Belgium and while she enjoys the overseas forays, she is still thrilled to perform close to home at Chicago area musical events.
On where she sees the direction of the blues, Angel is ready to embrace the future. “I always have hope that the blues will live on. The blues is what all great American musical genres are made from after all. Everything starts with the blues.”