"Blues is my life," says Grammy Award-winning blues singer Koko Taylor, Chicago's—and the world's—undisputed Queen Of The Blues. "It's a true feeling that comes from the heart, not just something that comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and singing the blues is what I always do." And, in many ways, blues is what saved Koko Taylor's life.

"I come from a poor family," recalls Koko. "A very poor family. I was raised up on what they call a sharecropper's farm." Born Cora Walton (an early love of chocolate earned her the lifelong nickname Koko) in 1928 just outside of Memphis in Bartlett, Tennessee, Koko was an orphan by age 11. Along with her five brothers and sisters, Koko developed a love for music from a mixture of gospel she heard in church and blues she heard on radio stations beaming in from Memphis. Even though her father encouraged her to sing only gospel music, Koko and her siblings would sneak out back with their homemade instruments and play the blues.

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