finetune artist: Angela Strehli

b. 22 November 1945, Lubbock, Texas, USA. A linchpin in the Austin blues scene from its inception in the 70s, Strehli had met up with Lubbockites Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore and learned harmonica and bass before becoming a singer. As the Texas representative of the YWCA, she visited Chicago in 1966 and spent her free time visiting blues clubs to see Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Buddy Guy. In her final years at university, she formed the Fabulous Rockets with Lewis Cowdrey; an attempt to establish the band in California failed after a few months. Returning to Austin, she sang back-up for James Polk And The Brothers and sat in with Storm, formed by Cowdrey and Jimmie Vaughan. In 1972, she formed Southern Feeling with W.C. Clark and Denny Freeman. Three years later she took a job as stage manager and sound technician for the Antone's club. Strehli went back to full-time singing in 1982 and in 1986 recorded Stranger Blues, an EP that inaugurated the Antone's label. Soul Shake followed a year later. In 1990, Strehli dissolved her band and moved to San Francisco. Two years later, along with Marcia Ball and Lou Ann Barton, she recorded Dreams Come True, an album of original songs, along with Ike Turner's "A Fool In Love" and "I Idolize You" and Etta James' "Something's Got A Hold On Me". Blonde And Blue combined Little Walter and Elmore James songs with her own material and a duet with Don Covay on "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um". Her first release of the new millennium, Live From Rancho Nicasio, was put out by the artist herself in the absence of a recording contract, emphasizing the present sad state of the music business.

Listen to Angela Strehli at Finetune.

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