Chico Banks
Encyclopedia
Chico Banks was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 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,...

 guitarist and singer. Banks released one album in 1997 on Evidence Records, but played with plenty of other blues musicians, from his late teens to his death at the age of 46.

He is best known for his tracks "Your Fine" and "Candy Lickin' Man". He was the son of fellow guitarist, Jessie Banks, who played backing to Mighty Clouds of Joy
Mighty Clouds of Joy
The Mighty Clouds of Joy is an American gospel quartet.-Career:The Mighty Clouds of Joy were formed in 1960 and started out in a tradition-based style. Eventually they added soul, R&B, and rock flourishes into their musical mix without diluting the essential religious essence of their material...

. One commentator noted that Banks "focuses on good-time, upbeat blues".

Biography

He was born Vernon X. Banks in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Banks was inspired by Magic Sam
Magic Sam
Samuel "Magic Sam" Gene Maghett was an American Chicago blues musician. Maghett was born in Grenada, Mississippi, United States, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter...

, 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...

, Albert King
Albert King
Albert King was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing.-Career:...

, Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, Otis Clay
Otis Clay
Otis Clay is an American R&B and soul singer, who started in gospel music.-Life and career:...

, George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....

 and Tyrone Davis
Tyrone Davis
Tyrone Davis , born Tyrone Fettson, was a leading American soul singer with a distinctive style, recording a long list of hit records over a period of more than 20 years. He had three no...

. However, his 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...

 guitar playing also incorporated both jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 and funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 stylings. Banks first played in a covers
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...

 group in his mid teens. He later worked with Melvin Taylor
Melvin Taylor
Melvin Taylor is an American electric blues guitarist, based in Chicago, Illinois.-Career:Born in Mississippi, Taylor relocated to Chicago in 1962....

, James Cotton
James Cotton
James Cotton is an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who has performed and recorded with many of the great blues artists of his time as well as with his own band.-Career:...

, Little Milton
Little Milton
James Milton Campbell, Jr. , better known as Little Milton, was an American electric blues, rhythm and blues, and soul singer and guitarist, best known for his hit records "Grits Ain't Groceries" and "We're Gonna Make It."-Biography:Milton was born James Milton Campbell, Jr., in the Mississippi...

, Magic Slim
Magic Slim
Magic Slim is an American blues singer and guitarist.-Biography:Magic Slim was forced to give up playing the piano when he lost his little finger in a cotton gin mishap. He moved first to nearby Grenada. He first came to Chicago in 1955 with his friend and mentor Magic Sam...

, and Big Time Sarah
Big Time Sarah
Big Time Sarah, is an American blues singer.-Biography:Sarah Streeter was raised in Chicago, Illinois, from early childhood, where she sang in gospel choirs in South Chicago churches...

, as well as both Guy and Clay. He also contributed towards the Long Way to Ol' Miss album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

, recorded in 1996 by Willie Kent
Willie Kent
Willie Kent was an American blues singer, bassist and songwriter.-Career:Kent was born in Inverness, Sunflower County, Mississippi....

.

His own 1997 debut album, Candy Lickin' Man, released on Evidence, saw Banks play alongside Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress and civil rights activist who recorded with The Staple Singers, her family's band.-Biography:...

. In 2002, Banks played on Lee "Shot" Williams' album, Let the Good Times Roll, and the following year on Tyrone Davis' album, Come to Daddy.

In 2007, Banks underwent surgery for a faulty heart valve.

Banks died in Chicago in December 2008.
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