Tommy Castro
Encyclopedia
Tommy Castro is an American
blues
, R&B
and rock
guitar
ist and singer. He has been recording since the mid 1990s. His music has taken him from local stages to national and international touring. His popularity was marked by his winning the 2008 Blues Music Award for Entertainer Of The Year. According to The Chicago Sun-Times, Castro plays "Memphis soul-drenched R&B…top-of-the-line blues." Blurt added, "Castro has a soulful voice, searing guitar and is an excellent songwriter and vocalist. If you close your eyes you will be convinced that you are listening to Otis Redding singing in 1967…tremendous.”
, Chicago blues
, west coast blues
, soul music
, 1960s rock and roll
and Southern rock
. His style has always been a hybrid of all his favorite genres. He names Mike Blooomfield, Elvin Bishop
, Eric Clapton
, B.B. King, Buddy Guy
, Elmore James
and Freddie King
as guitar influences and Ray Charles
, Wilson Pickett
and James Brown
as vocal influences.
He began playing professionally in Bay Area
cover-song bands in the 1970s. In the 1980s he joined the Warner Bros. Records
’ band The Dynatones. Since 1991, he has led his own bands, featuring a drummer
, bass guitar
player and saxophone
player (Keith Crossan has held the saxophone position for many years). As of 2009, he had added trumpeter Tom Poole and keyboards to the band.
He was signed to Blind Pig Records
label and released Exception To The Rule in late 1996. It won the 1997 Bay Area Music Award for Outstanding Blues Album, and Castro also took the award for Outstanding Blues Musician that same year. In the mid-1990s The Tommy Castro Band served as the house band for three seasons on NBC
Television’s Comedy Showcase (airing right after Saturday Night Live
), bringing him in front of millions of viewers every week.
In 2001 and 2002, B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer concert tours. Castro received an open invitation to join King on stage for the nightly finale.
Castro has released albums on the Telarc, 33rd Street
and Heart And Soul and most recently on the Alligator
label, as well as on Blind Pig
. His album Guilty of Love featured the last recording session for John Lee Hooker
. In 2002 he was featured on the Bo Diddley
tribute album Hey Bo Diddley - A Tribute!, performing the song "I Can Tell". In 2007 the readers of BluesWax (online magazine) voted Painkiller as BluesWax album of the year. It also won the 2008 Blues Music Award for Contemporary Blues Album Of The Year.
In 2009, Castro joined the roster of Chicago’s Alligator Records
with his release Hard Believer, produced by John Porter
. The album was described by Billboard
as "irresistibly funky…it has a street-level grit and a soulful sincerity that’s impossible to ignore." Blues Revue said Hard Believer is "a fine set of roadhouse-rockin’ blues.". Blurt says, “Hard Believer might just be the best yet from this veteran Bay Area blues artist.”
In May 2010, The Blues Foundation
awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
and rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
ist and singer. He has been recording since the mid 1990s. His music has taken him from local stages to national and international touring. His popularity was marked by his winning the 2008 Blues Music Award for Entertainer Of The Year. According to The Chicago Sun-Times, Castro plays "Memphis soul-drenched R&B…top-of-the-line blues." Blurt added, "Castro has a soulful voice, searing guitar and is an excellent songwriter and vocalist. If you close your eyes you will be convinced that you are listening to Otis Redding singing in 1967…tremendous.”
Biography
Castro began playing guitar at the age of 10 and was influenced and inspired by electric bluesElectric blues
Electric blues is a type of blues music distinguished by the amplification of the guitar, bass guitar, drums, and often the harmonica. Pioneered in the 1930s, it emerged as a genre in Chicago in the 1940s. It was taken up in many areas of America leading to the development of regional subgenres...
, Chicago blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
, west coast blues
West Coast blues
The West Coast blues is a type of blues music characterized by jazz and jump blues influences, strong piano-dominated sounds and jazzy guitar solos, which originated from Texas blues players relocated to California in the 1940s...
, soul music
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, 1960s rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
and Southern rock
Southern rock
Southern rock is a subgenre of rock music, and genre of Americana. It developed in the Southern United States from rock and roll, country music, and blues, and is focused generally on electric guitar and vocals...
. His style has always been a hybrid of all his favorite genres. He names Mike Blooomfield, Elvin Bishop
Elvin Bishop
Elvin Bishop is an American blues and rock and roll musician and guitarist.-Career:Bishop was born in Glendale, California, and grew up on a farm near Elliott, Iowa. His family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was ten years old...
, Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
, B.B. King, Buddy Guy
Buddy Guy
George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...
, Elmore James
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
and Freddie King
Freddie King
Freddie King , thought to have been born as Frederick Christian, originally recording as Freddy King, and nicknamed "the Texas Cannonball", was an influential African-American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar, along with Albert...
as guitar influences and Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...
, Wilson Pickett
Wilson Pickett
Wilson Pickett was an American R&B/Soul singer and songwriter.A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100...
and James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
as vocal influences.
He began playing professionally in Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
cover-song bands in the 1970s. In the 1980s he joined the Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
’ band The Dynatones. Since 1991, he has led his own bands, featuring a drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
, bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
player and saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
player (Keith Crossan has held the saxophone position for many years). As of 2009, he had added trumpeter Tom Poole and keyboards to the band.
He was signed to Blind Pig Records
Blind Pig Records
Blind Pig Records is an American blues record label.Blind Pig was formed in 1977 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jerry Del Giudice, owner of the Blind Pig Cafe, and his friend Edward Chmelewski. The label is now based in San Francisco...
label and released Exception To The Rule in late 1996. It won the 1997 Bay Area Music Award for Outstanding Blues Album, and Castro also took the award for Outstanding Blues Musician that same year. In the mid-1990s The Tommy Castro Band served as the house band for three seasons on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Television’s Comedy Showcase (airing right after Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
), bringing him in front of millions of viewers every week.
In 2001 and 2002, B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer concert tours. Castro received an open invitation to join King on stage for the nightly finale.
Castro has released albums on the Telarc, 33rd Street
33rd Street Records
33rd Street Records is an independent record label based in Greenbrae, California. The company finalizes the production of albums by mastering the audio and designing the album cover...
and Heart And Soul and most recently on the Alligator
Alligator Records
Alligator Records is a Chicago-based independent blues record label founded by Bruce Iglauer in 1971.Iglauer started the label with his own savings to record and produce his favorite band Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, whom his employer, Bob Koester of Delmark Records, declined to record...
label, as well as on Blind Pig
Blind Pig Records
Blind Pig Records is an American blues record label.Blind Pig was formed in 1977 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jerry Del Giudice, owner of the Blind Pig Cafe, and his friend Edward Chmelewski. The label is now based in San Francisco...
. His album Guilty of Love featured the last recording session for John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...
. In 2002 he was featured on the Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
tribute album Hey Bo Diddley - A Tribute!, performing the song "I Can Tell". In 2007 the readers of BluesWax (online magazine) voted Painkiller as BluesWax album of the year. It also won the 2008 Blues Music Award for Contemporary Blues Album Of The Year.
In 2009, Castro joined the roster of Chicago’s Alligator Records
Alligator Records
Alligator Records is a Chicago-based independent blues record label founded by Bruce Iglauer in 1971.Iglauer started the label with his own savings to record and produce his favorite band Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, whom his employer, Bob Koester of Delmark Records, declined to record...
with his release Hard Believer, produced by John Porter
John Porter (musician)
John Porter is an English musician and record producer.-Biography:He attended St Michael's School, Allerton Grange School, King's College, and Newcastle University....
. The album was described by Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
as "irresistibly funky…it has a street-level grit and a soulful sincerity that’s impossible to ignore." Blues Revue said Hard Believer is "a fine set of roadhouse-rockin’ blues.". Blurt says, “Hard Believer might just be the best yet from this veteran Bay Area blues artist.”
In May 2010, The Blues Foundation
Blues Foundation
The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, that is affiliated with more than 175 Blues organizations from various parts of the world....
awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.
Discography
- 2009 Hard Believer (AlligatorAlligator RecordsAlligator Records is a Chicago-based independent blues record label founded by Bruce Iglauer in 1971.Iglauer started the label with his own savings to record and produce his favorite band Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers, whom his employer, Bob Koester of Delmark Records, declined to record...
) - 2008 Command Performance: Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue (Delta GrooveDelta Groove ProductionsDelta Groove Productions is a blues record label based in Van Nuys, California. The company Delta Groove Productions, Inc. was founded by Southern California-based producer, concert promoter and harmonica player Randy Chortkoff...
) - 2007 Painkiller (Blind PigBlind Pig RecordsBlind Pig Records is an American blues record label.Blind Pig was formed in 1977 in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Jerry Del Giudice, owner of the Blind Pig Cafe, and his friend Edward Chmelewski. The label is now based in San Francisco...
) - 2005 Soul Shaker (Blind Pig)
- 2003 The Essential (Janblues)
- 2003 Gratitude (Heart And Soul) – now on Oarfin
- 2003 Triple Trouble (Telarc)
- 2001 Guilty of Love (33rd Street33rd Street Records33rd Street Records is an independent record label based in Greenbrae, California. The company finalizes the production of albums by mastering the audio and designing the album cover...
) - 2000 Live at the Fillmore (Blind Pig)
- 1998 Right as Rain (Blind Pig)
- 1997 Can't Keep a Good Man Down (Blind Pig)
- 1995 Exception to the Rule (Blind Pig)
- 1994 No Foolin (Saloon)