Son of a jazz guitarist and a blues singer, James Armstrong was born to play blues. Before and after what he calls the ‘incident’, James has traveled around the world on tour showing his compositional skill and his elegant, accurate, and exciting style. Not in vain, this guitarist born in California has worked with names like Albert Collins, Coco Montoya, Keb Mo’, Chaka Khan, Rickie Lee Jones, Mitch Mitchel, Shemekia Copeland or Tommy Castro.
It was in 1997 when the blues was about to lose one of its most inspired artists, after the release in 1995 of his debut album “Sleeping with the Stranger”, acclaimed by the world press as the best debut on the blues scene that year. One fateful night an intruder entered his house to steal. James tried to defend himself and suffered irreversible injuries to his shoulder that left his left hand practically useless. He saved his life but his musical career, which had only just begun, seemed to be over.
With tremendous determination and the help of friends such as Joe Louis Walker or Doug Macleod on guitars, he managed to release his second album “Dark Night” a year later. The return to the stages was somewhat longer, James had to relearn and adjust his blues to the new circumstances. The result could not be better, James returned with a more relaxed and accurate style, the power and elegance of the slow blues.
