Popa Chubby Band

Overview

Popa Chubby Band is a United States blues group led by Popa Chubby, the performing name of Theodore Joseph Horowitz. The act is associated with blues, blues rock and guitar-driven music, and its sound is rooted in New York City blues, drawing on rock, R&B, punk and hip hop as well as traditional blues forms.

Origins and formation

Popa Chubby is born in the Bronx, New York, and grows up in New York City. His early musical background includes hearing early 1960s soul and R&B on a neighbourhood jukebox, as well as family records of jazz and R&B. He starts on drums at the age of eight, then takes up guitar at fourteen. He later works in New York’s punk scene, including gigs with Screaming Mad George and a world tour with Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

In 1984, while busking in Central Park, he meets singer-songwriter Pierce Turner. He works with Turner through the late 1980s, contributing blues guitar to Turner’s album The Sky And The Ground. The Popa Chubby Band name is established in 1990 after an impromptu jam with Bernie Worrell, who is associated with Parliament Funkadelic.

Style and influences

His playing style is described as angry and aggressive, with Willie Dixon among the key influences. Other major influences include Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Johnny Winter, Foghat, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Albert King, B.B. King and Freddie King. The group’s music combines blues with contemporary urban elements and is presented as a New York City variant of blues, shaped by the city’s mix of musical cultures.

Career and recordings

After forming the band, Popa Chubby plays clubs across New York and becomes house band at Manny’s Car Wash, where he backs and opens for visiting musicians. In 1991 he wins the National Blues Talent Search organised by KLON radio in Long Beach and earns an opening slot at the 1991 Long Beach Blues Festival. He then tours regionally and releases two independent records on his own label.

In 1994 he signs with the revived O-Keh label, part of Sony Music, and releases Booty and The Beast. The single “Sweet Goddess Of Love and Beer” becomes a summer radio hit in 1995. After leaving the label in 1996, he returns to releasing music on his own imprint. His first two CDs are later issued in France as a collection by Dixiefrog, which helps establish a strong audience there and leads to extensive touring in Europe.

Other releases mentioned include How’d a White Boy Get the Blues?, which appears in Europe in 2000 and in the United States on Blind Pig Records in 2001, and Stealing the Devil’s Guitar, released on Dixiefrog in 2006. How’d a White Boy Get the Blues? mixes electric and acoustic guitar with drum loops and electronics to connect blues, hip hop and R&B. Stealing the Devil’s Guitar includes slide, acoustic guitar, mandolin and sitar alongside hard blues rock guitar.

Associated work and reputation

Popa Chubby also works as a producer through Popa Chubby Productions, recording his own albums and releases by other New York artists. His music is closely associated with the development of a New York City blues style. He is especially successful in France and Europe, where he appears on guitar magazine covers and plays major venues regularly.