Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Linsey Alexander moved to Memphis with his mother at age 12 and soon, thanks to a family friend, developed an interest in the guitar. At 17, he pawned his guitar to finance a trip to Chicago to follow a girl. Once in town, he worked a variety of odd jobs—cooking, car salesman, gas station attendant, delivery boy, etc.
While he didn’t get his first instrument back, he soon bought a new guitar and made a name for himself on the South Side with his band, the Hot Tomatoes. Eager to improve, he formed another ensemble, The Equitable Band, which played regularly for eight years at the Launching Pad Lounge and at parties.
He also played with drummer Red Saunders. His popularity in the South Side clubs then allowed him to access those of the North Side like BLUES and the Kingston Mines. Discovered by a wider audience, including tourists, at the heart of the “blues boom” of the 1990s, he released from the end of the 1990s a series of self-produced records or published on small local labels: the EP “Blues’n More” in 1998, then the albums “Someone’s Cookin’ In My Kitchen”, “My Days Are So Long” (with Chico Banks and Carlos Showers) and “If You Ain’t Got It”. If these records each have their charm, the economic production conditions as well as the absence of distribution do not allow them to be heard outside Chicago.
The release in 2012 of a first Delmark album, “Been There Done That”, hailed by 4 stars in the columns of Soul Bag, changed all that, and in the process, Alexander made his debut on the European stages as part of the 2013 Chicago Blues Festival tour, where his band accompanied Nelly “Tiger” Travis and Harmonica Hinds. A second Delmark album followed in 2014, “Come Back Baby”, and Alexander returned to the French stages the following year for a tour with Gaspard Ossikian’s Gas Blues Band.
He answered questions from Soul Bag for an interview published in our issue 223. A new album was released in 2017, “Two Cats”, also on Delmark. A regular at Chicago clubs, particularly Buddy Guy’s Legends, it was at Rosa’s Lounge that he recorded what would be his last album, “Live At Rosa’s”, which was released in 2020. Ill, it was in a wheelchair and without playing guitar that he performed for the last time at the Chicago Blues Festival in 2022.
(story courtesy of Delmark Records)