Information AboutKokomo Arnold |
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Kokomo Arnold ( 15 February 1901 – 8 November 1968 ) was an American Blues Musician . Born James Arnold in Lovejoys Station , Georgia , Arnold received his nickname in 1934 after releasing ''Old Original Kokomo Blues'' for the Decca label; it was a cover of the Scrapper Blackwell blues song about the "Kokomo" brand of coffee. A left-handed slide-guitarist, his intense slide style of playing and rapid-fire vocal style set him apart from his contemporaries. Having learned the basics of the guitar from his cousin John Wiggs, Arnold began playing in the early 1920s as a sideline while he worked as a farmhand in Buffalo, New York , and as a steelworker in Pittsburgh . In 1929 he moved to Chicago and set up a Bootlegging business, an activity he continued throughout Prohibition . In 1930 Arnold moved south briefly, and made his first recordings, ''Rainy Night Blues'' and ''Paddlin' Blues'', under the name Gitfiddle Jim for the Victor label in Memphis, Tennessee . He soon moved back to the bootlegging center of Chicago, though he was forced to make as living as a musician after the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment To The United States Constitution ending Prohibition in 1933 . From his first recording for Decca on 10 September 1934 until his last on 12 May 1938 , Arnold made eighty-eight sides, seven of which remain lost. Along with Peetie Wheatstraw and Amos Eaton , he was a dominant figure in Chicago Blues circles. His major influence upon modern music is, along with Peetie Wheatstraw, upon the seminal Delta Blues artist Robert Johnson , a musical contemporary. Johnson turned ''Old Original Kokomo Blues'' into '' Sweet Home Chicago '', while another Arnold song, ''Milk Cow Blues'', became ''Milkcow Calf's Blues'', performed by Elvis Presley . In 1938 Kokomo Arnold left the music business and began to work in a Chicago factory. Rediscovered by blues researchers in 1962 , he showed no enthusiasm for returning to music to take advantage of the new explosion of interest in the blues among young white audiences. He died of a heart attack in Chicago at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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