Today, we celebrate 16 August

16 August 1951: Eric Bibb was born in New York into a household steeped in music. His father, Leon, was a fixture of the city’s folk revival and a marching companion of Dr Martin Luther King, while his uncle was Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis. His godfather was Paul Robeson, and family friends included Pete Seeger and Odetta, whose records young Eric played whenever the house emptied out.

Given his first guitar at eight, Bibb absorbed lessons wherever he found them, including an eleven-year-old’s encounter with Bob Dylan, who told him to keep it simple and forget the fancy stuff. He briefly studied at Columbia before leaving at nineteen for Paris, where guitarist Mickey Baker steered him toward the blues, and later settled in Stockholm, building a career largely from European soil.

Over five decades and more than forty albums, Bibb fused Delta blues with folk and world influences, earning three Grammy nominations and multiple Blues Music Awards, and remains one of the genre’s most travelled and quietly influential ambassadors.

“I believe that I'm a crusader for happiness myself. I look at music as being something joyful, good and beautiful.” ~ Horace Silver