Richard A. Allen (January 6, 1935 – May 29, 2005)'' Juke Blues'' no.59, 2005, Obituaries, p.68 was an American

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

singer from Chicago. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and began his singing career as a member of a church choir in his home town. He relocated to Chicago in 1960, and received a recording contract one year later at Age Records. He had a local hit with "You Better Be Sure" and, in 1963, his hit "Cut You A-Loose" reached Number 20 in ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

s R&B

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

. Some of his

recordings A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, r ...

of the 1960s, such as "It's A Mess I Tell You" and "I Can't Stand No Signifying", portended the emerging soul-blues style of the 1970s. After his retirement from the

music industry The music industry consists of the individuals and organizations that earn money by writing songs and musical compositions, creating and selling recorded music and sheet music, presenting concerts, as well as the organizations that aid, train, ...

in the early 1970s, he ran a laundry and a limousine service. In 2001, he performed at the Mönsterås Festival in Sweden, and the following year at the

Chicago Blues Festival The Chicago Blues Festival is an annual event held in June, that features three days of performances by top-tier blues musicians, both old favorites and the up-and-coming. It is hosted by the Chicago, Illinois, City of Chicago Department of Cu ...

. He died in 2005, aged 70.

References

* Komara, Edward (ed.) (2006), ''Encyclopedia of the Blues'', Routledge

External links

Obituary
''Jazz News'', 2005 American blues singers Musicians from Nashville, Tennessee Chicago blues musicians 1935 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American singers USA Records artists {{US-singer-stub