Johnny Shines; ‘Delta Blues’ Musician

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Mississippi blues musician Johnny Shines, one of the last of the original “Delta blues” guitarists and singers, died Monday at 76.

Shines had been hospitalized since March 18, when a leg was amputated because of hardening of the arteries, said his wife, Candy.

A native of Frayser, Tenn., Shines spent much of his youth in Mississippi playing acoustic blues with such legendary musicians as Robert Johnson. He moved to Chicago and became a mainstay on the electric blues scene, playing on dozens of records under his own name and as a sideman to other blues musicians.

By the late 1950s, Shines was all but out of the music business and was working at various jobs as a laborer. In 1965, he was rediscovered by blues historians and began playing at festivals across the country and in Europe.

In 1969, Shines settled in Holt, Ala., near Tuscaloosa. He continued to play the blues club circuit. He was nominated for a Grammy award in 1980 for “Hangin’ On,” a recording with Robert Junior Lockwood.

In 1965, Shines--one of the few musicians comfortable with the rural blues of the Mississippi Delta and the sharper urban blues of Chicago--and Otis Spann and Johnny Young were featured in a three-volume series of Vanguard Records called “Chicago/The Blues/Today!” The albums were re-released on compact disc in 1989.