Brenda calls it "Bourbon and Cornbread," the musical mixture of jazzy sweetness and down-home sass that marks her as "the most authentic and most inventive female jump blues vocal stylist of her generation," according to blues historian Lee Hildebrand. Brenda Boykin has earned a sterling reputation in the San Francisco Bay Area as a masterful interpreter of jazz and blues material gleaned from big bands, old blues hands, and honky tonk heroes. Boykin has firmly established herself as an unsurpassed vocal talent whose elixir of bourbon and cornbread - sounds from silk to sandpaper - delight both new listeners and purists who compare her to the giants of the past. A native of Oakland, California, Boykin's first musical experience came through the youth choir of the North Oakland Missionary Baptist Church, one of the many houses of the lord where raucous, heart-felt sounds of the faithful still ring out on the wide streets of the East Bay flatlands. ...show more

Brenda calls it "Bourbon and Cornbread," the musical mixture of jazzy sweetness and down-home sass that marks her as "the most authentic and most inventive female jump blues vocal stylist of her generation," according to blues historian Lee Hildebrand. Brenda Boykin has earned a sterling reputation in the San Francisco Bay Area as a masterful interpreter of jazz and blues material gleaned from big bands, old blues hands, and honky tonk heroes. Boykin has firmly established herself as an unsurpassed vocal talent whose elixir of bourbon and cornbread - sounds from silk to sandpaper - delight both new listeners and purists who compare her to the giants of the past. A native of Oakland, California, Boykin's first musical experience came through the youth choir of the North Oakland Missionary Baptist Church, one of the many houses of the lord where raucous, heart-felt sounds of the faithful still ring out on the wide streets of the East Bay flatlands.

The church strains can still be found in her rich, husky contralto, effortless power and controlled vocal passion. After studying the clarinet in high school Boykin entered the University of California at Berkeley - and though studying psychology and social welfare - gravitated toward the jazz bands working on and near campus. Boykin worked Bay Area jazz and blues hot spots that helped her expand her musical horizons. With the encouragement of family friend and guitarist Sonny Lane, Boykin began to dig in with the blues people at Oaklands's legendary Eli's Mile High Club.

The famous North Oakland night spot has been for many years the heartbeat of East Bay blues life, with giant figures including Percy Mayfield, Lowell Fulson and Jimmy McCracklin gracing the small stage alongside lesser-known stalwarts including guitarist and arranger Johnny Heartsman, Sonny Lane and Mississippi Johnny Waters. Under tutelage of Lane, Waters and drummer Francis Clay - an influential force in the great Muddy Waters bands of the late '50's and early '60's - Boykin absorbed the laid back, call-and-response magic of the late night urban blues. "Boykin does delightfully unfamiliar things with familiar tunes," said the East Bay Express in 1988, "using her rhythmic authority and arranger's sensibility to create exciting new version" of tunes from Basie, B.B., Buck Owens and everybody in between. She often cites Sarah Vaughn as a major influence, but Brenda Joyce Boykin is certainly not a devotee to any one stylist or genre. ...show less