CHICAGO — Koko Taylor, a sharecropper’s daughter whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the sobriquet “Queen of the Blues,” has died after complications from surgery. She was 80.
Taylor died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital about two weeks after having surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding, her record label, Alligator Records, announced.
“The passion that she brought and the fire and the growl in her voice when she sang was the truth,” blues singer and musician Ronnie Baker Brooks said Wednesday. “The music will live on, but it’s much better because of Koko. It’s a huge loss.”
Taylor’s career stretched more than five decades. While she did not have widespread mainstream success, she was revered and beloved by blues aficionados and earned worldwide acclaim for her work, which included the best-selling song “Wang Dang Doodle” and tunes such as “What Kind of Man Is This” and “I Got What It Takes.”
In the course of her career, Taylor was nominated seven times for Grammy awards and won in 1984.
Taylor last performed May 7 in Memphis, Tenn., at the Blues Music Awards.
Born Cora Walton just outside Memphis, Taylor said her dream to become a blues singer was nurtured in the cotton fields outside her family’s sharecropper shack.
Orphaned at 11, Koko — a nickname she earned because of an early love of chocolate — at age 18 moved to Chicago with her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, in search for work.
Setting up house on the South Side, Koko found work as a cleaning woman. At night and on weekends, she and her husband, who would later become her manager, frequented Chicago’s clubs.
“I started going to these local clubs, me and my husband, and everybody got to know us,” Taylor said.
