Music
Eddie "Guitar" Burns
1928–2012 · blues guitarist, harmonica player, singer
Mississippi-born guitarist and harmonica player who spent six decades on the Detroit blues scene, backing John Lee Hooker and leading his own bands.
- Born
Belzoni, Mississippi- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 84- Birth name
- Eddie Burns
- Also known as
- Big Daddy · Little Eddie
- Detroit years
- 1948–2012
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Burns reached Detroit in 1948 after a stop in Waterloo, Iowa, and quickly found work in the nightclubs of Black Bottom. That same year he cut his first single, "Notoriety Woman," featuring his harmonica, and began playing harmonica and guitar on John Lee Hooker's sessions, a partnership that lasted into Hooker's Chess albums of the mid-1960s. Between 1953 and 1965 he released singles on DeLuxe, Checker, Chess, Harvey and Von Battle's Von label, while supporting his family as a mechanic. European blues fans discovered him in the 1970s: his first album, Bottle Up & Go, was recorded in London in 1972, and the J. Geils Band covered his "Orange Driver." He kept performing around Detroit into his eighties, recording with his brother Jimmy Burns in 2002 and giving his last show at the Motor City Blues & Boogie Woogie Festival in 2008. He died in Detroit in 2012.
Highlights
- Debut single "Notoriety Woman" (1948)
- Played guitar and harmonica on John Lee Hooker recordings from 1948 to the 1960s
- First album Bottle Up & Go (1972), recorded in London
- Detroit Blues Society Lifetime Achievement Award (1998)
- Last concert at the Motor City Blues & Boogie Woogie Festival (2008)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Performed here · 1948–1950s
Hastings Street (Black Bottom / Paradise Valley)
Demolished · 1960
Burns found his first Detroit work in the nightclubs of Black Bottom, the district along Hastings Street later cleared for the freeway.