Biography of Fenton Robinson

"The Mellow Blues Genius," as his Japanese fans have dubbed him, is a widely praised and honored artist, yet Robinson has had to struggle financially throughout a career that has most often found him an undeniably distinctive and original stylist in search of a market. After recording in a Memphis-based blues style early in his career (Meteor, 1957, and Duke, 1959), Robinson moved from Arkansas to Chicago in 1961 and began staking out his own stylistic territory, one that made use of his extensive and growing knowledge of musical structures and progressions. His well-known "Somebody Loan Me a Dime" (Palos, 1967, later re-recorded for Alligator) was an early culmination of his blues vision. A thinking man of the blues, Robinson seems forever ready to explore something new, moving to a new city every few years and continually experimenting with his fluid, jazz-flavored blues, perhaps just too far ahead or too far removed for the rest of the blues world to catch up. ~ Jim O'Neal