1. Charles Douglas Musselwhite was born on January 31,1944 and is an American blues harmonica player and bandleader who came to prominence, along with Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop, as a pivotal figure in helping to revive the Chicago Blues movement of the 1960s.
Charlie Musselwhite has often been identified as a "white bluesman".
Charlie Musselwhite was reportedly the inspiration for Elwood Blues, the character played by Dan Aykroyd in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.
Musselwhite, whose father and paternal grandfather were named Charlie Musselwhite, was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi to white parents.
Charlie Musselwhite's father played guitar and harmonica, his mother played piano, and another relative was a one-man band.
At the age of three, Charlie Musselwhite moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
Charlie Musselwhite supported himself by digging ditches, laying concrete, and running moonshine in a 1950 Lincoln automobile.
Charlie Musselwhite then took off in search of the rumored "big-paying factory jobs" up the "Hillbilly Highway", Highway 51 to Chicago, where he continued his education on the South Side, making the acquaintance of blues musicians Lew Soloff, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Big Walter Horton.
Charlie Musselwhite immersed himself completely in the musical life, living in the basement of and occasionally working at Jazz Record Mart with Big Joe Williams and working as a driver for an exterminator, which allowed him to observe what was happening around the city's clubs and bars.
Charlie Musselwhite spent his time hanging out at the Jazz Record Mart, at the corner of State and Grand, and a nearby bar, Mr Joe's, with the city's blues musicians, and sitting in with Williams and others in the clubs, playing for tips.
Charlie Musselwhite took advantage of the clout this album gave him to move to San Francisco, where, instead of being one of many competing blues acts, he held court as the king of the blues in the exploding countercultural music scene, an exotic and gritty figure to the flower children.
Since then, Charlie Musselwhite has released over 20 albums and has been a guest performer on albums by many other musicians, such as Bonnie Raitt's Longing in Their Hearts and the Blind Boys of Alabama's Spirit of the Century, both winners of Grammy Awards.
Charlie Musselwhite performed on Tom Waits's Mule Variations and INXS's Suicide Blonde.
Charlie Musselwhite has won 14 Blues Music Awards, has been nominated for six Grammy Awards, received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Monterey Blues Festival and the San Javier Jazz Festival, in San Javier, Spain, and received the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.
In 1990 Charlie Musselwhite signed with Alligator Records, a step that led to a resurgence of his career.
In 1998, Charlie Musselwhite appeared in the film Blues Brothers 2000.
Charlie Musselwhite's 1999 recording, Continental Drifter, is accompanied by Cuarteto Patria, from Cuba's Santiago region, the Cuban music counterpart of the Mississippi Delta.
Charlie Musselwhite believes the key to his musical success was finding a style in which he could express himself.
Charlie Musselwhite can be heard at the beginning of the song "Chocolate Jesus" saying "I love it".
Charlie Musselwhite lost both of his elderly parents in December 2005, in separate incidents.
Charlie Musselwhite joined the judging panel of the 10th annual Independent Music Awards, to assist independent musicians' careers.
Charlie Musselwhite was a judge for the 7th and 9th Independent Music Awards.
Charlie Musselwhite was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2010.
Charlie Musselwhite was trapped in there with a broken arm in the dark, in a life-and-death situation she was singing nursery rhymes to herself and being brave.
In 2023, Charlie Musselwhite won another Blues Music Award with the 'Acoustic Album of the Year' title for his LP, Mississippi Son.
Charlie Musselwhite portrays Alvin Reynolds in the 2023 Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon.