“Up” retains altitude, tops box office again
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ñ “Up,” the story of a floating house, its grumpy 78-year-old owner and an inquisitive 8-year-old accidental stowaway, remained atop the weekend box office in North America, selling $44.2 million of tickets its second weekend in theaters.
The family-friendly Disney/Pixar animated release about a house lifted by colorful balloons and the odd couple’s adventures showed surprising staying power. Its weekend gross was down 35 percent from its opening weekend but still made a strong showing for a film in its second week.
Movie industry analysts had predicted that “Up” would bring in less than $40 million.
“The Hangover,” released by Warner Bros. Pictures, was a close second at $43.3 million. The film about a group of men trying to reconstruct what happened at a wild, Las Vegas bachelor party benefited from a good buzz and positive reviews. It also was the first big comedy released after a month dominated by action flicks.
Universal’s “Land of the Lost,” a new release starring Will Ferrell, finished a disappointing third at $19.5 million. It is a remake of a mid-1970s U.S. children’s television series.
Four of the top five films attracted families with small children as recession-weary parents continued to seek entertainment at the movies.
“Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” collected $14.7 million and landed in the No. 4 spot. It made about $54 million when it opened two weekends ago, and has taken in $127 million overall.
“Star Trek,” a Paramount issue, also showed staying power, finishing fifth for the weekend in its fifth week of release. It brought in $8.4 million. Its cumulative total stands at $223 million.
ANGELIC WORLD GROSS
“Angels & Demons,” from Sony/Columbia, earned $6.5 million in North America during the weekend and its worldwide gross surpassed the $400 million mark, making it the No. 1 film in the world in 2009.
The film, based on Dan Brown’s popular novel about conspiracy in the Catholic church, is the follow-up to the Brown novel and 2006 movie, “The Da Vinci Code.”
Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Pictures, said the weekend pushed the “Angels & Demons” international gross to about $405 million. “The Da Vinci Code” brought in about $540.7 million globally.
The website rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates movie criticism, showed that positive reviews for “The Hangover” helped it prevail over “Land of the Lost” in their debut weekends. “The Hangover” gathered 75 percent positive reviews, compared to only 28 percent for “Land of the Lost.”
A reason for the resilience of “Up” may be the fact that it had a 98 percent rating on the website.
Third among new released and seventh for the week overall was Fox Seachlight’s “My Life In Ruins,” which took in $3.2 million. It suffered from negative reviews — only 12 percent positive criticism according to rottentomatoes.com.
Month: June 2009
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Press play and enjoy!!
The Couch Potato Report – June 6th, 2009
This week The Couch Potato Report peels a Quebec film, a Saskatchewan Grandson, some fan boys and Paris, circa 1936.
Believe it or not I actually have ten releases to tell you about this week, primarily do to the release of some great films in High Definition on Blu-ray, so let me get right to this week’s HOT POTATO…the made-in-Montreal film HONEY, I’M IN LOVE/LE GRAND DEPART.
This is the story of Jean-Paul, a 53-year-old doctor who leaves his family behind to start a new life with a younger woman…25 years younger.
But what he believed would be heavenly bliss quickly turns into a complete nightmare.
HONEY, I’M IN LOVE/LE GRAND DEPART is very serious and dramatic at times, but it also has some very funny stuff too as Jean-Paul tries to do what’s right, and find a way to be happy again.
The film won’t make you completely happy as it stalls toward the end and the last twenty minutes move at a snails pace, but the end result is a film that I thought was very good.
Not great, but very good.
Those words are true for HONEY, I’M IN LOVE/LE GRAND DEPART and they are also true for SEASON SEVEN of the television show 24.
Not great, but very good.
Since this is the seventh year of the show starring Tommy Douglas’ grandson Keifer Sutherland, I won’t recap the entire premise of the show, but I will tell you that in this season the show returned to the quality it had acheived in Seasons one to five. Season Six was a stinker, but I am happy – as a fan of it – to report that 24 is back on track!
This Season in the show is set in Washington D.C., after years in Los Angeles. Sutherland’s Jack Bauer is on trial for all his misconduct and questionable interrogation tacticts.
Bauer’s day takes an unexpected turn when the government is threatened and his expertise is needed once again.
SEASON SEVEN of 24 returned the show to glory by giving us great twists and turns and great action and dilemmas for it’s lead characters.
If you are looking for some great action this Saskatchewan Weekend, check it out!!
If you are looking for a less than mediocre film starring some exceptionally likeable actors, well, skip 24 and look for HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU.
Personally, I think yous hould skip this film, but – like I said – if you are looking for a less than mediocre film starring some exceptionally likeable actors, than this one is for you!!
How is this for a cast, HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU stars Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Justin Long AND Ginnifer Goodwin, all nice, likeable people…in real life!
Their film is about modern day relationships and how men and women often misconstrue the intentions of the opposite sex.
That premise, that cast, that all sounds good to me…but this movie is not good, and let me be totally clear so you don’t misunderstand my signals…this movie is not good.
I don’t think that anyone, man or woman will enjoy sitting through it.
Yes, just so we are completely clear, I’m JUST NOT THAT INTO IT!!
Yes, the cast and most of the characters are likeable, but this movie doesn’t give any of them enough screen time. Plus it isn’t that funny, the drama is all too easily resolved, and in the end the film is a huge failure, regardless of how good the cast is.
So, if you want to see a film about love and relationships that features likeable characters who are all connected through with multiple stories, don’t bother with HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU…look for LOVE ACTUALLY.
Now THAT is a great film, that I am totally into!!
Yes, I am into LOVE, ACTUALLY, and Joni Mitchell, and I am also totally into the STAR WARS films, and so when I heard that there was a movie coming out set in 1998 about four friends who were going on a cross country trip together to break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to watch “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” before the movie’s worldwide release, I was stoked!!
And when I heard that they were doing this drive together so they could see it with their dying friend, before it was too late, I thought that whatever this movie was, it would be great!!
Sadly, FANBOYS is not great…not at all!!
It is one of the most disappointing films ever!
That is the film’s Director Kyle Newman, and if you watch the special features on the DVD, or listen to the film’s commentary, it is obviou sthat he, an dthe rest of the cast and crew behind this film have a great affinity for STAR WARS and their fans.
However, their fantastic premise is poorly realized, the comedy fails almost every time, and the emotion of a dying friend is even missing.
It is not funny, not touching, and not good.
Yes, there are some funny sight gags, some great cameos, and Kristin Bell from VERONICA MARS and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL.
FANBOYS is a failure, plain and simple. The combination of STAR WARS, the music of Rush, and friends hanging out should have appealed to me, but it didn’t…and none of my friends liked it either.
Just skip it, the force is weak with this one.
I have five films to tell you about now because all of them are now available in High Definition on Blu-ray, and – for the most part – they all look and sound fantastic!!
The Blu-Ray beacon will first shine on the Oscar winning classic Fargo!
The Coen Brothers’ movie looks a little grainy in High Def, but the writing and the characters are still as entertaining as ever and so I will keep this one in the new format.
And I will also keep THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
This was the very first film I ever watched on video, when my Dad brought home our very first Beta machine and some movies in the last 1970s.
Home viewing has come along way since then, but this version of the Clint Eastwood classic looks and sounds great!! It too is a keeper, because of the film itself, and due to the insightful retrospective documentary features too!
Not all of the James Bond films are classics, even though I do admire and like them all, but for me two of the worst ones are Roger Moore’s THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and LICENCE TO KILL starring Timothy Dalton…and wouldn’t you know it, they have both been released on Blu-ray at the same time!
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and LICENCE TO KILL might not be as good as some of the other films in this ongoing series, but they are still Bond films, and so their transfer to HD is welcome, and they look and sound very good.
AIR FORCE ONE is the final new to Blu-ray title this week, and while the film is still a very entertaining movie, the transfer to digital isn’t a complete success as some of the special effects don’t look very good when they are shown as clear as High Definition allows them to be.
But while the film might not excel in High Def, seeing Harrison Ford in action is always something I will enjoy, so I give it a passing grade!
Finally this week, let’s head to Paris for this week’s FOREIGN FILM FESTIVAL ON DVD.
FAUBOUG 36 is the small Foreign film I want to share with you this morning, while the big and loud releases of the Summer Movie Season explode on screens across the province.
The film take place in the Spring of 1936 – in a working-class district in the north of Paris.
Faubourg is the blue-collar neighbourhood where a once vibrant music hall is now closed and in disrepair.
Three unemplyed friends decide to rent the hall and begin to produce a “hit” musical that will allow them to buy the place.
FAUBOUG 36 is a great little film that features music, comedy and drama. At times it does move a little slow, but the Parisian scenery and interesting characters in the film don’t allow that to happen for too long at a time.
I really liked this one.
This week’s entry in the FOREIGN FILM FESTIVAL ON DVD is FAUBOUG 36 from France and it is available now on DVD along with the very good Quebec film HONEY, I’M IN LOVE/LE GRAND DEPART.
Harrison Ford’s AIR FORCE ONE, the James Bond films THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and LICENCE TO KILL, the classic western THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, the Coen Brothers’ great FARGO, the failed FAN BOYS, the very bad HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU and SEASON 7 of Keifer Sutherland’s television show 24 are all available now on DVD and Blu-ray.
Coming up in Two Weeks on the next Couch Potato Report
ONE WEEK is the story of a man who finds out he is going to die so he takes a motorcycle trip from Toronto to the Pacific Ocean.
Also in two weeks, we will spend three days at WOODSTOCK
I’m Dan Reynish. I’ll have more on those, and some other releases, in fourteen days.
For now, that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I’ll see you back here next time on The Couch!
Categories
I am happy with the way she looks too!!
Clarkson blasts weight critics
Kelly Clarkson has lashed out at people who poke fun at her fluctuating weight – insisting she is happy with the way she looks.
The former American Idol champion has been spotted sporting a fuller figure in recent months, leading to internet bloggers to criticise her for piling on a few extra pounds.
But the star won’t let the pressure to be thin faze her – insisting she has been forced to deal with the nasty jibes since she shot to fame in 2002.
She says, “For seven years it’s been happening. It’s like, ‘Okay, cool the fat joke’.
“I love my body. I’m very much OK with it. I don’t think artists are ever the ones who have the problem with their weight, it is other people.”
Categories
This is good!!
Second City opens theatre venue named for John Candy
Toronto’s Second City troupe officially raised the curtain Friday on a new performance space named after the late Canadian comedy great John Candy.
The John Candy Box Theatre opens Friday evening with a show featuring Second City alumni and faculty.
The cozy theatre space is part of Second City Toronto’s Training Centre, which offers courses to the general public on improvisation, acting and writing. It will host regular pay-what-you-can shows and serve as a performance venue for Second City students.
Toronto-born Candy died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 43, during filming of the movie Wagons East.
His career included starring on the comedy-variety show SCTV, as well as a long string of Hollywood films throughout the 1980s and early 90s, such as Splash; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Uncle Buck; Brewster’s Millions; Spaceballs; Who’s Harry Crumb?; Home Alone; JFK; Only the Lonely; and Cool Runnings.
During the 1990s, the lifelong football fan was also a minority owner of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts team, along with hockey great Wayne Gretzky and majority partner Bruce McNall, including during the team’s 1991 championship season. The team added Gretzky and Candy’s names to the Grey Cup in a special ceremony in 2007.
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Could they pull it off?!?
Reitman Mulls Over Ghostbusters 3 Offer
Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman is considering returning to direct the long-awaited third installment of the spooky movie franchise.
Original stars Billy Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson are returning to the big screen for a second sequel – a full 20 years after Ghostbusters 2.
Reitman, who directed the first two films, has been offered the chance to complete the trilogy – but is waiting until he reads the script before he commits.
He tells MTV News, ìIíve never ruled (directing it) out. I certainly was responsible in every capacity for the first two movies so I certainly wouldnít wander away from the third one – especially if itís something we all think is worth doing.
ìThe script is going to be turned in a month or so and weíll see. All the casting and directing speculation is really just speculation.î
Categories
No more polka Grammys?!?! WTF?!?!
Sad day for Ostanek as Grammys drop polka
Bad news for Canada’s polka kings.
The Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammy Awards, has decided to eliminate the category for best polka album.
“I don’t like to see it happen,” legendary bandleader and three-time Grammy winner Walter Ostanek said Thursday from his home in St. Catharines, Ont.
“There’s room for our music.”
John Gora, who’s been nominated four times in the polka category but has never won, was more blunt.
“That sucks,” he said from Burlington. “Of course I’m disappointed.”
In a statement, the academy said polka was scrapped to “ensure the awards process remains representative of the current musical landscape.” Grammy organizers also split a folk category in two and combined two Latin categories into one.
There will be 109 awards handed out at next year’s Grammys instead of 110. The ceremony takes place Jan. 31, 2010 in Los Angeles.
Polka was by no means the only obscure category at the annual music bash.
Trophies will still be handed out for best packaging, liner notes, surround sound album, classical crossover album, Hawaiian music album and zydeco or Cajun music album.
Gora blamed the polka decision on politics, pointing out that American bandleader Jimmy Sturr has won the category 18 times.
“You can’t have a polka guy holding world records,” he said. “You can’t have Jimmy Sturr winning more Grammys than Quincy Jones, for example.”
But Sturr has long had competition from Ostanek, the undisputed Canadian polka king.
Ostanek’s treks to Los Angeles have practically become an annual Grammy tradition ñ after all, he’s racked up more than 20 nominations (his three wins came in consecutive years, from 1992-94).
In fact, the gregarious musician was nominated at this year’s show but lost out to ñ who else? ñ Sturr.
Still, even though his category is gone, Ostanek, 74, didn’t have a bad word to say about his experiences with the glitzy show.
“I personally don’t have any regrets,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of nice people. The Grammys have treated me good.”
A member of Canada’s Walk of Fame and the Order of Canada, Ostanek has appeared on The Tonight Show and some have speculated that he was the inspiration for SCTV’s famed Shmenge Brothers.
Ostanek, who owns a music shop in St. Catharines, says the Grammys have given him tremendous exposure and lamented that young polka musicians would not receive the same boost.
“I personally have had a good ride and I feel sorry for the future artists coming up,” he said. “There are fans out there and there will be more fans down the line. But that’s the way it is.”
Meanwhile, Gora worried about the effect the academy’s decision could have on polka music in general.
“It’s a bad thing (for polka),” he said. “A Grammy nomination just recognizes you, puts you on another level. It just recognizes the talent of the local guys that really don’t have the big budget to operate but are still excellent musicians.”
Gora, who plans to begin recording a new CD this weekend, said he intends to submit his recordings in the world music category now.
He certainly isn’t giving up on trying to win his first Grammy.
“Why should I?” he said. “The guys work hard and we put out good material.
“I even have a new song about the crazy bailout that’s going on with the financial and automotive companies. We have a new song about it. It’s just a 2/4 beat and why shouldn’t it be heard by others?”
Ostanek, who diligently collected autographs from his favourite artists during his trips to the Grammys, said the show made him feel special.
“Everybody wants to be a somebody,” he said. “You’re mingling with Tony Bennett and other people like him on a one-to-one basis …. I’ve had a wonderful ride.”
Categories
Flip, floppity, flop!
‘Land of the Lost’ may be summer’s first flop
If pre-release audience polling proves right, not many moviegoers will find “Land of the Lost” this weekend.
Universal and Relativity Media’s $100-million comedy based on the 1970s TV show is tracking to sell $30 million to $35 million worth of tickets this weekend. That’s in line with other recent films starring Will Ferrell, such as “Step Brothers.” But for a big-budget summer event movie, it would be a weak debut.
The movie’s marketing campaign doesn’t seem to be drawing enough teenagers or adults. Its best hope is to draw families with older kids who aren’t interested in “Up.”
Universal surely picked this Friday to open the film in hopes it would launch in a dominant first-place position. But a movie that originally looked like counter-programming, “The Hangover,” will probably end up close and could possibly beat it.
Warner Bros. and Legendary’s modestly budgeted comedy is tracking to open in the mid-$20 millions. Both men and women seem to be drawn to the film’s hilarious advertisements — you can never go wrong with a baby in sunglasses — despite the lack of a major star.
Regardless of which new movie comes out on top, the No. 1 film this weekend almost certainly won’t be a new one. If it follows the pattern of previous Pixar animated features, “Up” will drop less than 50% on its second weekend in theaters, meaning it should gross close to $40 million. Strong weekday ticket sales as children start getting out of school have boosted “Up’s” total gross to $86.9 million after a $68.1-million opening weekend.
Fox Searchlight is also opening the low budget Nia Vardalos comedy “My Life in Ruins.” It will probably gross under $10 million.
In international markets, the major new release will be “Terminator Salvation.” Sony Pictures is releasing the film in 61 countries on behalf of the Halcyon Co., which has to hope the fourth series entry will do better overseas than it has at home. After a two full weeks, “Salvation,” which had a production budget around $200 million, has grossed only $95.9 million in the U.S. and Canada, suggesting its own salvation has yet to come.
Carol Burnett ready for your questions
Legendary comedienne Carol Burnett used to begin her TV variety show with a few questions from the audience, in a segment that both reinforced that the show was taped before a live audience and demonstrated her considerable skills as a spontaneous funny woman.
This June, she will take the stage in Winnipeg, Toronto, Regina and Saskatoon with a show Laughter and Reflection with Carol Burnett that recreates those Q&A sessions. She also returns to Vancouver this fall to headline the Comedy Festival.
The Q&A sessions, like the sessions in her TV variety show, which ran from 1967 to 1978, will be completely unplanned.
No planted questions “because that wouldn’t be honest,” Burnett said in an interview Thursday with CBC’s Q cultural affairs show.
“They ask a lot. I get certain questions every place I go,” she said. “Like how did you find Harvey [Korman] and Tim [Conway] and Vicki [Lawrence] and Lyle [Waggoner] ó how did you get with them? How did you teach yourself the Tarzan yell? Why do you pull your ear at the end of every show that you do?”
The late Korman and fellow comedians such as Conway, Lawrence and Waggoner were part of the sketch team that made The Carol Burnett Show a hit for so long.
At 76, Burnett said she doesn’t need to keep entertaining, but still welcomes the chance.
“The reason I’m doing it is a) I’m enjoying it and b) it keeps the grey matter ticking. I have to be on my toes as I never know what anybody’s going to ask and I have to turn it around to make it entertaining to the audience,” she said.
The idea for the Q&A session came from The Garry Moore Show, a New York variety show that Burnett worked on regularly in the 1950s.
In the beginning, she was terrified
“He would go out before the show and he would warm up the audience by having a conversation with them,” Burnett recalled.
Harvey Korman holds the face of Carol Burnett during a routine on The Carol Burnett Show in 1967 in Los Angeles. (Associated Press)”When I got my own show, my executive producer Bob Banner said, ‘You know, Carol, if you are going to be doing a lot of characters, it’s really important for the audience to know you.’ I said, ‘I’m not a standup comic. I’m not going to come out there and do jokes or anything.'”
Burnett admits she was initially terrified at the idea of facing questions, but it soon became a favourite part of the show.
“I never knew what anybody was going to ask or want to do ó sometimes we got people up on stage who would sing,” she said. “It was a great opening for us to get know each other. Then we went on with the show.”
Burnett is credited with blazing new trails for women in comedy. She has won the Peabody Award, Kennedy Centre Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She still follows comedy keenly and admires how far female comedians have come since her day. But she regrets the loss of variety shows on network TV.
Nine variety shows were on the air at the same time as The Carol Burnett Show, including The Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In, she said.
“You couldn’t do it today because of cost,” Burnett said, adding that TV viewers are missing some of the “flat-out belly laughs,” that made TV so much fun in the 1970s.
Laughter and Reflection with Carol Burnett starts June 10 in Winnipeg, followed by June 12 in Toronto, June 14 in Regina and June 16 in Saskatoon.
Categories
Remember her?!?
Whitney Houston Comeback Album Due Sept. 1
The wait is over — Whitney Houston is finally making her comeback on Sept. 1 with an as-yet-untitled album on Arista Records. For her return, the label has set up a countdown on the New Jersey-bred artist’s official site,
WhitneyHouston.com, which will also preview selected tracks slated to appear on the album in coming weeks.
Producers and songwriters said to aid with the set include will.i.am, Sean Garrett and Akon, although there is no confirmation on whether a duet with Akon, “Like I Never Left,” which leaked last year, will make the cut.
“The voice is there; I don’t think anyone could ever take that from her. As long as we apply that voice to hit records, she’ll be right back where she left off,” Akon told Billboard.com back in 2007.
Houston made her first high-profile public appearance at her mentor Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy gala back in February, where she performed a four-song set that included brief renditions of “I Will Always Love You” and “I Believe in You and Me” plus a tent revival-style take on “I’m Every Woman.”
Houston has been dogged in recent years by drug and health issues — including rehab stints in 2004 and 2005 — a legal dispute with her father, John Houston, rumored financial problems and a troubled marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown that ended in divorce.
Houston’s last album was 2002’s “Just Whitney,” which sold 737,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Categories
May she rest in peace!!
Blues queen Koko Taylor dies at 80
CHICAGO ó Koko Taylor, a sharecropper’s daughter whose regal bearing and powerful voice earned her the sobriquet “Queen of the Blues,” has died after complications from surgery. She was 80.
Taylor died Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital about two weeks after having surgery for a gastrointestinal bleed, said Marc Lipkin, director of publicity for her record label, Alligator Records, which made the announcement.
“The passion that she brought and the fire and the growl in her voice when she sang was the truth,” blues singer and musician Ronnie Baker Brooks said Wednesday. “The music will live on, but it’s much better because of Koko. It’s a huge loss.”
Taylor’s career stretched more than five decades. While she did not have widespread mainstream success, she was revered and beloved by blues aficionados, and earned worldwide acclaim for her work, which including the best-selling song Wang Dang Doodle and tunes such as What Kind of Man is This and I Got What It Takes.
Taylor appeared on national television numerous times, and was the subject of a PBS documentary and had a small part in director David Lynch’s Wild at Heart.
In the course of her career, Taylor was nominated seven times for Grammy awards and won in 1984.
Taylor last performed on May 7 in Memphis, at the Blues Music Awards.
“She was still the best female blues singer in the world a month ago,” said Jay Sieleman, executive director of The Blues Foundation based in Memphis. “In 1950s Chicago she was the woman singing the blues. At 80 years old she was still the queen of the blues.”
Born Cora Walton just outside Memphis, Taylor said her dream to become a blues singer was nurtured in the cotton fields outside her family’s sharecropper shack.
“I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas and he would play the blues,” she said in a 1990 interview. “I would hear different records and things by Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, Sonnyboy Williams and all these people, you know, which I just loved.”
Although her father encouraged her to sing only gospel music, Cora and her siblings would sneak out back with their homemade instruments and play the blues. With one brother accompanying on a guitar made out of bailing wire and nails and one brother on a fife made out of a corncob, she began on the path to blues woman.
Orphaned at 11, Koko ó a nickname she earned because of an early love of chocolate ó at age 18 moved to Chicago with her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, in search for work.
Setting up house on the South Side, Koko found work as a cleaning woman for a wealthy family living in the city’s northern suburbs. At night and on weekends, she and her husband, who would later become her manager, frequented Chicago’s clubs, where many the artists heard on the radio performed.
“I started going to these local clubs, me and my husband, and everybody got to know us,” Taylor said. “And then the guys would start letting me sit in, you know, come up on the bandstand and do a tune.”
The break for Tennessee-born Taylor came in 1962, when arranger/composer Willie Dixon, impressed by her voice, got her a Chess recording contract and produced several singles (and two albums) for her, including the million-selling 1965 hit, Wang Dang Doodle, which she called silly, but which launched her recording career.
From Chicago blues clubs, Taylor took her raucous, gritty, good-time blues on the road to blues and jazz festivals around the nation, and into Europe. After the Chess label folded, she signed with Alligator Records.
In most years, she performed at least 100 concerts a year.
“Blues is my life,” Taylor once said. “It’s a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do.”
In addition to performing, she operated a Chicago nightclub, which closed in November 2001 because her daughter, club manager Joyce Threatt, developed severe asthma and could no longer manage a smoky nightclub.
Survivors include her daughter; husband Hays Harris; grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be announced, the label said.