When your mother plays nothing but the blues in the house, your cousin is blues titan Magic Sam, and you grow up in the same building with him on the west side of Chicago, you have little choice but to be firmly rooted in the blues.

As a teenager, Mike remembers all the backyard barbecue parties that Sam hosted. ''Man, he loved to barbecue. He used to have them all the time. And I remember all kind of blues musicians and singers like Otis Clay, Tyrone Davis, Betty Wright used to come around. Sam would cook and play blues on the back porch every chance he could. You could smell the barbecue clear down the street and all way at the end of the alley…'' Already a singer in his teens, Mike soaked up as much as he could from his cousin, Magic Sam. In the middle seventies, Mike started singing at the Majestic Lounge on 14th and Pulaski with house blues bands, Scotty And the Rib Tips and Johnny B. Moore. He remembers, ''It was something, man, back then The Majestic was the after-gig joint. A lot of musicians would go there after their shows and just hang out. People like Lee Shot Williams, Mac Thompson, Johnny Dollar, Mary Lane. It was like a big family.'' It is easy to understand how growing up so close to such R&B and soul singers as Otis Clay and Tyrone Davis could lead Mike down the path to R&B and soul music where he has focused much of his career. ''I’m not on the blues circuit, but that’s where my roots are. I couldn’t deny it if I wanted to. Giving me a good blues tune to sing is like taking me back home.'' Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.