Jimmy Nelson: Jimmy "T-99" Nelson, who has died aged 88, had a brief but musically rewarding spell in the limelight in the early 1950s, dispensing artful blues of his own composition in an expansive, declaratory style modelled on that of Big Joe Turner.
Songs such as Meet Me With Your Black Dress Onand Big Mouth("every time I open my big mouth, I say the wrong thing at the right time . . .") would later earn him the appreciation of blues fans who relish a well-turned lyric.
But his biggest hit was a slow blues number that he probably put together from older motifs, T-99 Blues, in which his lugubrious vocal was offset by a softly chanted refrain from his accompanists, bizarrely billed as the Peter Rabbit Trio.
Born in Philadelphia, Nelson was inspired to launch a career as a singer by hearing Turner one night in Oakland, California. "I knew right then and there I wanted to sing the blues."
Turner offered good advice and even included him in his entourage, giving him experience that enabled him to work elsewhere as a singer and MC.
In 1955 he settled in Houston, married, and after a regional hit with Free and Easy Mindabandoned full-time music to work in construction.
The Houston record man Roy C Ames, who met him in the early 1970s, remembered him as "a strong, husky man, his equally strong and husky voice consigned to living in the past, recounting the days when his records were big hits and he made several famous tours. He had a small liquor bar in the living room of his home, and the wall behind it was generously decorated with his 45s, posters, Billboardmagazine charts, photos and assorted memorabilia."
But Nelson was not ready to slide into a reminiscent retirement. He cut some material for Ames, which that unreliable producer did not release until 20 years later, and doggedly kept his hand in as both songwriter and performer, sitting in with local bands. Rumours spread through the blues community that he was still well worth hearing.
His appearance in London in 1990 at a one-day blues festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall was not an unqualified success. Obviously enjoying his first trip to England, and delighted to find sympathetic and appropriate accompanists in the Big Town Playboys, Nelson spent too much of the afternoon before the concert gleefully running through his extensive repertoire with the Playboys' Mike Sanchez at the piano.
A more experienced backstager than myself would have counselled a rest. Come showtime, his voice was half gone. He swaggered manfully through his set and the audience applauded warmly, but some of them were surely clapping for the singer they had hoped to hear rather than the one on stage before them.
Nelson never sang in Britain again, but he did appear at festivals elsewhere in Europe, as well as at home, and in 1999 Rounder released a comeback album, Rockin' and Shoutin' the Blues, which accrued several award nominations.
It lacked the vocal vigour of earlier days, but numbers such as New Shack Loveremitted flashes of his old songwriting skill in puckishly crammed lines like "I was shackin' up with a no account good condition don't want to work lyin' girl." Other albums followed, including a scrupulous compilation of his 1950s work, Cry Hard Luck (Ace), and in 2004 a set with the Austrian band the Blue Flagships.
He kept busy until the end, welcoming the opportunity to pass on what he had learned in his long but uneven career. "You young cats are so damned anxious to get your behind out there in the public and to be cute and sing and all that, and lookin' sharp. Damn that. Get the business end of that straight and then wash your feet and change your socks and get out there."
His wife Nettie predeceased him.
Jimmy Nelson: born April 7th, 1919; died July 29th, 2007.