(3CD/DVD)
BIOGRAPHY
Elnora Jean "Nora Jean" Wallace (formerly Bruso) (born June 21, 1956) is
an American Chicago and electric blues singer and songwriter. She has
penned over 700 songs, and worked with Carl Weathersby and Dave
Specter.
Fellow blues singer, Koko Taylor once commented, "Nora Jean sounds just
like I did when I was her age. She is one of the new upcoming women that's
singing the real blues. I know she is going to make it." Bruso was named
one of the ten great women in Chicago blues by Chicago's Museum of Science
and Industry. She has been nominated various times for a Blues Music
Award.
Elnora Jean Wallace was born in Greenwood, Leflore County, Mississippi,
United States, to a musical family, the seventh of 16 children of a
Mississippi sharecropper.
Nora won the West Tallahatchie High School Talent Show for singing, and
began to perform in other schools in her local area. In 1976, she
relocated to Chicago, Illinois when she was 19 years old, and began
singing with a group called Scottie and the Oasis. In 1982, Scottie died
but she continued performing with other ensembles and three years later
joined Jimmy Dawkins' band. Bruso recorded her debut single, "Untrue
Lover" on Dawkins' own Leric label. In 1985, she contributed vocals on one
track of Dawkin's Feel the Blues release, billed as Nora Jean Wallace.
Dawkins band, including Bruso, appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival in
1989. Bruso also participated on Kant Sheck Dees Bluze (1991), another
Dawkins release, this time on Earwig Records.
In 1992, she left the music industry to raise her two sons, but almost a
decade later was tempted back into a recording studio following the
promptings of Billy Flynn, another member of Dawkins' backing band. Bruso
supplied four vocal tracks for Blues and Love (2002) and, the same year,
appeared as a backing singer with Dawkins again at the Chicago Blues
Festival. She met and married Mark Bruso in 2002. Later that year she
recorded Nora Jean Bruso Sings the Blues, which was released in 2003 by
Red Hurricane Records. Bruso performed again at the 2003 Chicago Blues
Festival, this time under her own name, and toured in Europe.
In 2004, she was nominated for two W.C. Handy Awards (now known as Blues
Music Awards), as 'Best New Artist' and 'Best Traditional Female Artist'.
The same year, after having signed a recording contract with Severn
Records, she released Going Back to Mississippi. This was more of a
commercial success reaching number five on Living Blues radio chart and
number one on XM satellite radio. In June 2004, she returned and performed
on the main stage at the Chicago Blues Festival with her own band. Her
ensemble at that time included Carl Weathersby (guitar), Bruce Beglin
(bass) and Brian Lupo (guitar). These musicians, among others, played on
Going Back to Mississippi.
Her live appearances continued and included the King Biscuit Blues
Festival, Rawa Blues Festival, Notodden Blues Festival (2005), Briggs Farm
Blues Festival (2008), Cape May Jazz Festival and Pocono Blues Festival.
She appeared again at the Chicago Blues Festival in 2011. In 2011, the
Chicago Sun-Times noted that her collaboration with Little Bobby for the
latter's album, Good Blues, "... helped push Nora Jean to her seventh
Blues Music Award nomination for 'Best Traditional Female Blues
Performer'."
In June 2014, she appeared with Lurrie Bell's Chicago Blues Band in
Pyla-sur-Mer, France. In July 2015, she performed at the Kingston Mines
club in Chicago.
Bruso is currently based in La Porte, Indiana. In 2020, she released her
latest album, Blues Woman
(Wikipedia)
