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Rory Block

RORY BLOCK
Country Blues . . . just fine pickin' and singin'
Heralded as "a living landmark" (Berkeley Express), "a national treasure" (Guitar Extra), and "one of the greatest living acoustic blues artists" (Blues Revue), Rory Block has committed her life and her career to preserving the Delta blues tradition and bringing it to life for 21st century audiences around the world. A traditionalist and an innovator at the same time, she wields a fiery and haunting guitar and vocal style that redefines the boundaries of acoustic blues and folk. The New York Times declared: "Her playing is perfect, her singing otherworldly as she wrestles with ghosts, shadows and legends."
A slide guitarist par excellence, and also a talented songwriter on her own account, Rory was born and raised in Manhattan by a family that had bohemian leanings. Her father owned a Greenwich Village sandal shop, where musicians like Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur and John Sebastian all made occasional appearances.
Rory's life was touched and profoundly changed by personal encounters with some of the earliest and most influential Delta blues masters of the 20th century. She learned her first lessons in blues and gospel music from the Reverend Gary Davis and swapped stories and guitar licks with seminal bluesman Son House, Robert Johnson's mentor ("He kept asking, 'Where did she learn to play like this?'"). She visited Skip James in the hospital after his cancer surgery. She traveled to Washington DC to visit with Mississippi John Hurt and absorb first-hand his technique and his creativity. "This period seemed to last forever," Block recalls nearly forty years later. "I now realize how lucky I was to be there, in the right place at the right time. I thought everyone knew these incredible men, these blues geniuses who wrote the book. I later realized how fleeting it was, and how even more precious.
Today, after more than twenty highly acclaimed releases and five Blues Music Awards, Block is at the absolute height of her creative powers, bringing a world full of life lessons to bear on what she calls "a total celebration of my beloved instrument and best friend, the guitar."
Some of the most singular and affecting Country Blues anyone, man or woman, black or white, old or young, has performed in recent years. -Rolling Stone
A living landmark, the finest contemporary purveyor of the Mississippi Delta Country Blues tradition... -Berkeley Express
... Rory Block is currently stretching the limits... hugely talented... She is one of our national treasures. -The New York Blues & Jazz Society
If you like music steeped in tradition and genuine feeling, this is your woman. -People Magazine