Keb' Mo' on Four Decades of the Blues, Remembering African American History, Activism in Music and More

THE GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING POST-MODERN BLUES MAESTRO WILL RETURN TO INDIA FOR THE MAHINDRA BLUES FESTIVAL THIS MONTH

- JESSICA XALXO

FOR NASHVILLE GRAMMY award-winning post-modern blues maestro Kevin Roosevelt Moore aka Keb’ Mo’, the love for the blues began at home. His late mother, Lauvella Cole, stacked mostly jazz records in their Los Angeles home -- 12 to be precise -- and some of them stayed with Mo’ and his siblings. From jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne’s 1963 album Gloria Lynne At The Las Vegas Thunderbird (With The Herman Foster Trio) to pop crooner Johnny Mathis’ 1958 compilation Greatest Hits to jazz musician Jimmy Smith’s 1964 LP Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and more, Mo’ found plenty to listen to as a teenager taking to the guitar. “She opened the door for us to get into blues but there wasn’t some ongoing discussion about music in the house. Once the introduction was made, it was up to you to figure out if it was for you,” he says.

As he hit his late teens, Mo’ found himself listening to Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Iron Butterfly, Santana and a lot of Taj Mahal on his ‘64 Ford Falcon’s eight-track tape machine, unwittingly immersing himself in influences that would go on to shape his distinct and continually evolving sound. From the R&B rockbed of his debut album Rainmaker (1980) to Just Like You’s (1996) pop laced tunes to