Joe McCoy
b. 11 May 1905, Raymond, Mississippi, USA, d. 28 January 1950, Chicago, Illinois, USA. An early start learning guitar prepared McCoy for a diverse recording career. At first, he partnered his wife, Memphis Minnie, and they made many blues records together in the late '20s and early '30s. McCoy (under the pseudonym Kansas Joe) played beautifully tight, two-guitar arrangements, sometimes one on lead vocals, sometimes the other and occasionally a duet. When the couple split up, McCoy was well-established in Chicago and continued to record as accompanist to other artists, under his own name or a variety of pseudonyms (including religious records as Hallelujah Joe). He adopted a more urbane blues style as time went on and, in 1936, he began a long and successful series of recordings with the jazz-orientated group, the Harlem Hamfats.