Biography of Bonnie Raitt

While some blues critics like to act as if all White practitioners of the music -- especially those who achieve any kind of mainstream success -- are little more than modern day carpetbaggers, few artists on the modern day charts have earned or come by their success more honestly or in a more hard won manner than Ms. Bonnie Raitt. Purists and naysayers will quickly point out that she's never made an album of just straight blues, but if it took Eric Clapton 30 plus years to get around to doing one, it's almost a certainty that the prolific redhead won't make blues lovers wait quite that long. As a vocaIist, she's never been any less than soulful and as a guitarist -- especially on slide, her specialty -- she reduces the old macho saw of "she plays pretty for a girl" into the same antiquated thought processes as expecting all women to look and act like June Cleaver.Born in 1949 into a show-business family (her dad is big-voiced Broadway star John Raitt) Bonnie started on guitar early on but really got the blues bug when she attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the '60s. Learning the ropes firsthand from blues legends Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell (her twin inspirations on slide) and classic blues woman vocalist Sippie Wallace, she started doing the local coffeehouse circuit (usually opening for John Hammond, Jr.), catching the eye of Dick Waterman, who managed all three artists and was soon managing her as well. She soon was appearing with all three performers, appearing on every folk and blues festival in existence, establish herself as the little hippie girl who was undoubtedly the real deal. A recording contract with Warner Brothers soon followed, and her eponymously titled debut opus featured the talents of Chicago blues legends Junior Wells and A.C. Reed. But with eclectic tastes in abundance, Raitt was soon flexing her interpretive muscles on future outings, showing her love for the work of great modern songwriters of all genres. Dividing her time equally with more pop-oriented albums while playing smaller venues as a solo act, the years of trying to party hearty with the older bluesmen finally caught up with her and the mid-'80s found her overweight with an alcohol and drug problem to boot. To make matters even worse, Warner Brothers -- her label of 15 years -- unceremoniously dumped her. But her turnaround -- both personally and professionally -- couldn't have more dramatic if she had hired a Hollywood scriptwriter to orchestrate it. With her booze and drug problems clearly behind her, she suddenly became the comeback kid with the 1989 Grammy-winning success of the aptly titled Nick of Time. She continued the run for the gold (or in this case, platinum) with the follow-ups 1991's Luck of the Draw, 1994's Longing in Their Hearts and 1998's Fundamental. But rather than kick back and hobnob with industry swells, her excellent contributions to John Lee Hooker's 1990 album The Healer and her tireless efforts on behalf of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation clearly illustrated that she hadn't left her blues roots in the trunk of the limo. No matter what eclectic path she follows from here on out, Bonnie Raitt remains one hell of a blues lady. ~ Cub Koda