Kenny Neal

Born: New Orleans, October 14, 1957 — Second-generation Louisiana blues

Kenny Neal is a second-generation Louisiana bluesman — guitarist, singer, and harmonica player — whose swamp-blues sound carries the bloodline of his father, Baton Rouge harp legend Raful Neal, and his mentors Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo. His 2016 album Bloodline earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

Never heard Kenny Neal before?

🏆 Grammy

Nominated — Best Contemporary Blues Album (Bloodline, 2016)

🎷 Style

Baton Rouge Swamp Blues

🎸 Plays

Guitar · Harmonica · Bass

One of the strongest modern proponents of R&B-drenched Baton Rouge swamp blues.

— AllMusic

Why We Love Kenny Neal

The Louisiana blues runs through Kenny Neal’s veins literally: son of Baton Rouge harp man Raful Neal, he got his first harmonica from Slim Harpo at age three, was playing in his father’s band at thirteen, and was holding down the bass chair for Buddy Guy at seventeen. Neal took that bloodline education and built a career that has carried swamp blues around the world — four albums for Alligator Records, a starring turn on Broadway in Mule Bone singing Taj Mahal’s songs, and a 2016 Grammy nomination for Bloodline, recorded in Nashville, Los Angeles, and Baton Rouge. His guitar is gritty and stinging, his harp is pure bayou, and his gravelly voice sounds aged beyond his years. Nobody carries the Baton Rouge sound into the future quite like a Neal.

Biography

Carrying the Bloodline of Louisiana Blues

Born October 14, 1957, in New Orleans, Kenny Neal is the son of Baton Rouge blues mainstay Raful Neal, whose circle included Buddy Guy and Slim Harpo. Harpo gave three-year-old Kenny his first harmonica; by thirteen he was playing in his father’s band, and at seventeen he picked up the bass to play behind Buddy Guy himself — a blues education money can’t buy.

Neal recruited his talented siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band in Toronto, then returned stateside and cut his 1987 debut, Bio on the Bayou, for Kingsnake Records. Alligator Records picked it up the next year and retitled it Big News from Baton Rouge!! — and Neal was on his way, cutting four albums for Alligator between 1989 and 1994. In 1991 he proved himself a performer of another kind, starring on Broadway in Mule Bone, the Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston folk musical, singing numbers written by Taj Mahal. Telarc Records carried him through the turn of the millennium with three albums beginning with Blues Fallin’ Down Like Rain (1998).

The new millennium brought a string of strong records: Let Life Flow (2008, Blind Pig) put him on the national blues charts, and Bloodline (2016, Cleopatra) — recorded in Nashville, Los Angeles, and Baton Rouge and co-produced with Buddy Guy’s Grammy-winning producer Tom Hambridge — earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. His latest, Straight from the Heart (2022, Ruf Records), finds him still swinging hard, still preaching the swamp blues gospel.