Late blues great Koko Taylor to get musical tribute fit for queen at Chicago memorial service

Late blues great Koko Taylor gets musical sendoff

CHICAGO — Hundreds of mourners turned out Thursday at a music-filled wake and memorial service for Chicago blues icon Koko Taylor, whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the nickname “Queen of the Blues.”

Among those who paid tribute to Taylor were Mayor Richard Daley and musicians Delores Scott and Vance Kelly. The “Queen” lay in a glass-topped casket at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side, dressed in an elegant off-white silk brocade dress, gloves and a tiara,

Daley told mourners, who included blues legend Buddy Guy, that Taylor’s legacy will endure because of the power of her life story.

“You really haven’t lost her,” Daley said.

Clarence Stevens, host of an Indiana blues radio show, recalled that Taylor always insisted that he stay for dinner when he visited her. He noted her influence on a new generation of blues artists and her efforts to keep the music alive.

“We have to educate our children. We even have to educate our adults” about the blues, Stevens told The Associated Press. “But the blues will never die.”

Taylor’s daughter, Joyce “Cookie” Threatt, introduced her mother’s band to those attending the memorial service, which included performances by musicians in town for this weekend’s Chicago Blues Festival.

“This was my mother’s family for 18 years,” she said.

Taylor’s funeral is Friday.

Born Cora Walton just outside Memphis, Tenn., Taylor said in a 1990 interview that her dream to become a blues singer was nurtured in the cotton fields outside her family’s sharecropper shack.

“I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas and he would play the blues,” she said. “I would hear different records and things by Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sonnyboy Williams and all these people, you know, which I just loved.”

Although her father encouraged her to sing only gospel music, Cora and her siblings would sneak out back with their homemade instruments and play the blues. With one brother accompanying on a guitar made out of bailing wire and nails and one brother on a fife made out of a corncob, she began on the path to blues woman.

Orphaned at 11, Koko — a nickname she earned because of an early love of chocolate — moved to Chicago at age 18 with her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, in search for work. He would later be her manager.

While Taylor didn’t have widespread mainstream success, her career spanned more than five decades and she was beloved by blues aficionados.

Her work included the best-selling song “Wang Dang Doodle” and tunes such as “What Kind of Man is This” and “I Got What It Takes.”

Taylor made numerous national television appearances, was the subject of a PBS documentary and had a small part in director David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart.” She earned seven Grammy nominations and won in 1984.

Taylor last performed on May 7 in Memphis, Tenn., at the Blues Music Awards.

She died June 3 at age 80 shortly after having surgery because of gastrointestinal bleeding.

Another visitation will be held Friday afternoon also at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters, followed by her funeral with a eulogy to be delivered by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.