Popa Chubby

Popa Chubby is the performing name of Theodore Joseph Horowitz, a blues rock and rock musician from the Bronx in New York City. Born in 1960, he works as a singer and guitarist and is also associated with the Popa Chubby Band. His music is strongly rooted in blues, with a hard-edged style that draws on rock, R&B and other urban influences from New York.

Early life and influences

Horowitz grows up in the Bronx and spends his childhood around his parents’ candy store on 181st Street and Arthur Avenue. Early exposure to a neighbourhood jukebox playing early 1960s soul and R&B leaves a lasting mark on him, and the music of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye remains present in his work. He begins on drums at the age of eight, then turns to guitar at fourteen. His father takes him to an oldies show at Madison Square Garden when he is seven, where he sees Chuck Berry perform; Berry becomes an important influence. Later, he listens closely to blues rock records by Johnny Winter, Foghat, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, and also studies Albert King, B.B. King and Freddie King.

Career

In the late 1970s, he answers a Village Voice advertisement for a guitarist and is hired by Japanese performance and special-effects artist Screaming Mad George. He plays at CBGB in New York’s Bowery and meets Richard Hell, who brings him into a new version of the Voidoids for a world tour. In 1984, while busking in Central Park, he meets singer-songwriter Pierce Turner, who has just signed to RCA Records. Chubby joins Turner on tour and contributes blues guitar to Turner’s album The Sky and The Ground. He continues working with Turner through the late 1980s.

In 1990, he forms the Popa Chubby Band. The name comes from an impromptu jam with Bernie Worrell, who points at him while singing a song called “Popa Chubby”. He builds a reputation in New York clubs and becomes house band at Manny’s Car Wash, where he backs and opens for visiting musicians. In 1991, he enters the National Blues Talent Search sponsored by KLON radio in Long Beach, wins the contest against numerous bands, and earns an opening slot at the Long Beach Blues Festival.

Recordings and labels

After touring regionally and releasing two independent records on his own label, he signs to the revived O-Keh label in 1994. Tom Dowd’s involvement helps persuade him to take the deal. The album Booty and the Beast appears in 1994, and its single “Sweet Goddess Of Love and Beer” becomes a radio hit in 1995. Creative differences leave him free to release music independently again from 1996. On advice from Dowd, he works in Europe, where his first two CDs are issued together by the French Dixiefrog label and find strong success.

He later works on a number of Dixiefrog projects, as well as his own releases and recordings by other New York artists under the banner of Popa Chubby Productions. His album How’d a White Boy Get the Blues? appears in Europe in 2000 and is later released in the United States by Blind Pig Records. The record blends electric and acoustic guitars with drum loops and electronics to connect blues, hip hop and R&B. Stealing the Devil’s Guitar follows on Dixiefrog in 2006 and includes slide guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, sitar and hard blues-rock lead guitar. His later albums include The Fight Is On, Back to New York City, Universal Breakdown Blues and I’m Feelin’ Lucky (The Blues according to Popa Chubby).

Style and reputation

Popa Chubby develops what he calls “New York City Blues”, a sound that brings together blues with hip hop, punk, rock and R&B. His playing is described as sharp and aggressive, and his songs often draw on city life and personal experience. His work is said to be more popular in France and across Europe than in the United States, where he tours less prominently than in Europe. He becomes known for strong live performances and for helping define a New York-based blues style that sits alongside contemporary rock and urban music.

Selected discography

Studio albums and major releases

Booty and the Beast; Gas Money; It’s Chubby Time; One Million Broken Guitars; Brooklyn Basement Blues; Popa Chubby Presents New York City Blues; How’d a White Boy Get the Blues?; New York City Blues (Again); Flashed Back (Songs From the ’60s Blues And Beyond); The Good the Bad and the Chubby; Black Coffee Blues Band; Old School - Popa Chubby and Friends Play; Peace, Love and Respect; Electric Chubbyland Volume One; Stealing the Devil’s Guitar; Deliveries After Dark; Vicious Country; The Fight Is On; Back to New York City; Universal Breakdown Blues; I’m Feelin’ Lucky (The Blues according to Popa Chubby).

Live albums and compilations

Hit the High Hard One; One Night Live In New York City; Popa Chubby Live at FIP; Wild Live; Big Man Big Guitar: Popa Chubby Live; Electric Chubbyland (3CD box set); Big, Bad and Beautiful (Live); The First Cuts; The Hungry Years; Ten Years With Popa Chubby Best Of.