Chicago blues legend Koko Taylor dies at 80

Chicago blues legend Koko Taylor died this afternoon while recovering from surgery to repair gastrointestinal bleeding. She was 80.

“She was recovering slowly but surely, and then she had a real bad night,” a spokesman for Taylor’s longtime Chicago-based label, Alligator Records, told the Chicago Tribune.

She was born Cora Walton in 1928 in Memphis, orphaned by age 11, and worked in the cotton fields to support herself. She and her future husband, Robert “Pops” Taylor, came to Chicago in 1952, and her big voice soon began filling South Side clubs.

Her final performance was May 7 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards. After being honored as Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year she sang “Wang Dang Doodle,” her signature song.

Her website has an obituary.

Here’s a 1967 clip of her singing “Wang Dang Doodle,” with Little Walter on harmonica:

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