Well, running a blues club was the family business. How was it, practically growing up in a blues club? Though his latest album, Bona Fide, is pure electric blues at its best. He’s also known for blending the blues and hip hop on his albums 21st Century Blues… From Da Hood and Dirty South Hip-Hop Blues. Since then, King has appeared in the HBO series Treme and documentaries such as Signpost to Freedom and Last Mississippi Jukes. He also helped score that film, and the soundtrack went on to win a Grammy. King went on to play blues guitarist Lowell Fulson in the biopic Ray.

When he played a version of Skip James' “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues” around the campfire with Clooney and crew, it became one of the film’s most poignant scenes. In the early oughties, he was tapped to play bluesman Tommy Johnson in Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?. He solidified his reputation as a top-notch blues man throughout the ’90s when he released several other well-recieved albums including Cry of the Prophets, Red Mud, and Me, My Guitar and the Blues. He toured Europe in his teens, and released his first album, The Beginning, in 1986. Nevertheless, blues musicians and fans from all over would converge there, and at 12, King began playing professionally. There wasn’t this Disneyland atmosphere.” 45 revolver sitting next to it,” he said in an interview. “ cash register was pretty much a cigar box with a. (King's father, Tabby Thomas, was also a blues musician.) The club was on the wrong side of the tracks, according to King. Chris Thomas King practically grew up in his father’s blues joint, Tabby’s Blues Box and Heritage Hall, in Baton Rouge, La.

The Blues by Chris Thomas King