LOUISIANA RED

As the years pass, there are fewer and fewer artists left that were active during the formative years of the blues and participated in the development of the music. Louisiana Red is one such artist. Born in Bessema, Alabama as Iverson Minter in 1932, his mother died a week after his birth. His father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan when he was a young boy. These hard beginnings serve as underpinnings for his songs, many of which are launching pads for expressing his immediate feelings in the nearly lost tradition of spontaneous composition that has immediate roots in the original Delta Blues artists, and goes even further back to the West African griot bards. In a career spanning more than half a century, Red has played with just about every major bluesman you can name (some of the most memorable encounters being his jams with B.B.King and Muddy Waters), but he exhibits the same intensitiy whether playing for 10,000 people at a festival or 100 people in an intimate club. After living in Germany for 20 years, Red has begun playing frequently in the United States again. We are proud to welcome one of the blues' progenitors to Santa Fe as a special fundraising event for the 2005 Thirsty Ear Festival.

Special thanks to Jack & Mary Jo Harrod, the Gerald Peters Gallery, Baron Wolman and Mig's Pro Systems for making this concert possible.