Born in the small town of Delhi, Louisiana, guitarist/singer/composer Bnois King has long been regarded as one of the finest proponents of Texan jazz and blues.
From a large family with seven brothers and two sisters, he was heavily influenced during his childhood by gospel music and first started playing at the age of eight when he found an old guitar in his grandmother's closet and taught himself to play blues covers. While still at school he joined his first big band, New Sounds, who were based in New Orleans, and then moved to Houston, Texas looking for his big break playing blues and jazz guitar. Discouraged when it didn't happen he abandoned his dreams for a while and took work as a car dealer, but returned seriously to music in his mid-30s, playing guitar and singing in clubs in Fort Worth and Dallas.
It was a meeting with electric guitarist Smokin' Joe Kubek, however, which set him on the road to greater acclaim. They teamed up and the contrast in the guitar styles of the rock influenced Kubek and the more mellow jazz-infused style of King proved unexpectedly popular as they started touring together. Originally Kubek was considered the front man but that all changed when, realising they needed a singer, King took on the role performing largely forgotten blues songs he'd learned as a child and made a great success of it; and when they needed new material, he wrote original songs of his own. King and Kubek released their first album together, 'Steppin' Out Texas Style' in 1991 and continued to work successfully together until Kubek's death in 2015.
