Solomon Hicks

One Liner:  Classic blues guitar slinging by a younger guy

Wikipedia Genre:  Blues, jazz

Home: Harlem

Poster Position: Bottom Quarter - Line 25
Weekend One Only
Friday at 2pm

Tito's Tent (the right venue)

Thoughts: He looks sort of like the guy from Police Academy who could do all of the cool sounds with his mouth.  But also sort of like the Reading Rainbow guy.

"King" Solomon Hicks, both by his nickname and his musical style, sounds like he should be an 80 year old dude who made music with Buddy Guy and BB King decades ago.  Instead, he is 31 and plays a groovy style of guitar classicism that ranges from the blues to rock to gospel to funk to soul.  I dig it.  He apparently got started when he was 6, taking lessons from his mother.  He attended the Harlem School of Arts and started sitting in on stage by 13. By 14, he was on a recording with the Cotton Club All-Star Band as the lead guitarist.  Since then, he's performed at a Knicks game, performed for the United Nations, jammed for NY politicians, and at famous blues clubs all around the world.  He has also played with all sorts, from Ringo Starr and Tony Bennett to Bruce Springsteen and Ne-Yo.

It's honestly damn fun music.  I'm just sitting here at my desk grooving on "421 South Main" like the way that Bill Cosby used to dance in the Cosby Show.  Here, groove that one.  894k streams.

C'mon!  Smokin' guitar and a funky backbeat.  I need a tumbler of Chivas, a pack of smokes, and a pretty lady to boogie with, stat.  He can also get into a Gary Clark-esque, grimier rock sound, like in the chorus of "When I Was Your Man."  He's also got covers of Adele ("Rumour Has It"), Aaron Neville ("It Feels Like Rain") and others.  Instead of giving you another tune from that first album (2020's Harlem) I will give you a tune from the new disc (2026's How Did I Ever Get This Blue).  Top track is "Flyin' High (Yesterday)" with 131k streams.

Pretty classic blues groove under that, along with pretty classic sounding vocals singing about the same thing as a hundred other bluesmen have sang about for a century.  This guy sounds great to me.  Not sure that I need to see it, but at the same time, he's better than a ton of what I have heard on the poster so far.