Nora Jean Bruso

Nora Jean Bruso (b. Greenwood, Mississippi, June 21, 1956 -- ) – Singer and songwriter. Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, Bruso, whose maiden name was Wallace, grew up in a family of blues musicians/sharecroppers. Although she had sung the blues like her hero Howlin’ Wolf since she was a young child, her professional career started much later in 1976, when her Aunt Rose took her to Chicago. During that trip, she joined Scottie and the Oasis (a blues group), whom she originally joined on stage as an impromptu session at the Majestic on the West Side. In 1985, Jimmy Dawkins discovered Bruso in Chicago and asked her to join his band. With Dawkin’s group, she toured internationally for seven years and recorded two CDs. With two daughters at home, she abandoned the life of a traveling blues singer in 1991 and kept a low profile, although she sang Gospel at her church and performed occasionally in Chicago. Once again, she returned to the Blues world in 2001, when friend Billy Flynn asked her to sing on his CD Blues and Love (Easy Baby, 2002). Shortly thereafter, she and her husband Marc moved to La Porte, Indiana, and enlisted musicians to help her create her first CD Nora Jean Bruso Sings the Blues, which was released on Red Hurricane Records in 2003. In 2002, she appeared at the Chicago Blues Fest and followed up her debut recording with Going Back to Mississippi (Severn Records, 2004), which included twelve original songs. She has continued to make appearances in Chicago while commuting from La Porte, and she has received several nominations for Blues Music Awards (formerly the W.C. Handy awards).