Big Daddy Kinsey born 18 March 1927

Lester J. Kinsey Jr., (March 18, 1927 – April 3, 2001) known as Big Daddy Kinsey, was an American Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. 

Like so many great local bluesmen, Lester J. Kinsey Jr. was born in the south, near Pleasant Grove, Mississippi. Lore has it that Kinsey picked up the guitar at age six, and because his father pastor father didn’t condone the devil’s music (that is, the blues), he started out playing gospel. While still in Mississippi, though, he caught a glimpse of Muddy Waters through a crack in a farmhouse wall.By the time his family packed up and moved to Gary in 1944, Kinsey was just getting started on his own musical career, playing the occasional local party. His father became pastor of Gary’s Chase Street Church of God in Christ, and Kinsey did a stint in the military and then went to work in the steel mills. 

In 1946, Kinsey married Christine McNeal, and for a few years he put music on the back burner while they started a family. By the late 50s he was gigging in Gary and Chicago alongside Windy City legends such as Jimmy Reed, Albert King, and his idol and muse Muddy Waters. Kinsey also played live in those days with guitarist Lonnie Brooks, who had moved to Chicago in 1960 but was still many years from becoming a blues legend in his own right. 

Kinsey raised a musical family. Sons Donald (born May 12, 1953), Ralph (April 26, 1952), and Kenneth (January 21, 1963) all played the blues too, and their dad made his return to live music only when they were old enough to join in. Kinsey started Donald on guitar at age four, and Ralph was hitting the drums by six. When Donald was six and Ralph was seven, they began gigging with their father as Big Daddy Kinsey & His Fabulous Sons. Because Donald had learned a lot of B.B. King songs, by the time he’d turned 12 he was being billed as B.B. King Jr. 

                                   

The family band broke up in 1972, but by then they’d grown popular enough around Gary that Kinsey had quit his day job. Donald and Ralph played in a short-lived but successful blues-rock trio called White Lightnin’, and Donald toured and recorded with the likes of Peter Tosh, Bob Marley & the Wailers, and the Staple Singers. In 1984 the brothers rejoined their father as Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report, adding Kenneth on bass. The elder Kinsey brought a roaring mix of Delta blues and golden-age Chicago electric blues, and the kids added elements of funk, rock, reggae, and soul. 

Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report got a huge boost from the participation of beyond-legendary Chicago pianist Pinetop Perkins, who’d played with basically every famous bluesman who’d ever lived. The band signed to Rooster Blues for the lauded 1985 LP Bad Situation, Kinsey’s debut album, and they toured 

internationally to support it. Kinsey probably enjoyed his greatest commercial success in the 80s, and throughout the 80s and 90s the family would appear on a flurry of releases under various names. 

As Big Daddy Kinsey & Sons, they issued the heavy blooz-rockin’ 1990 record Can’t Let Go on Blind Pig. The Kinsey brothers also put out several albums on their own as the Kinsey Report, beginning in 1987 with Edge of the City on famed Chicago label Alligator. Big Daddy made several solo albums too, including a raw, traditionalist 1993 release for Verve Records called I Am the Blues, whose all-star cast includes Perkins, Buddy Guy, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Jimmy Rogers, James Cotton, and Sugar Blue. 

In 1995 Christine Kinsey passed away, and by ’97 Big Daddy had stopped touring. He focused instead on a business he’d started: a charter bus company called Kenites Coach Lines that took tour groups on casino trips to the south. He had recorded his final album, Ramblin’ Man, in 1994, enlisting guests such as Carey Bell, John Primer, the Memphis Horns, Johnnie Johnson, Koko Taylor, and his son Donald. 

He died following a struggle with prostate cancer on April 3, 2001,at the Methodist Hospital Northlake Campus, in Gary, Indiana, aged 74. The big man left behind an impressive musical and family legacy—at the time of his death he had 12 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. 

(Edited mainly from The Chicago Reader)