Jeff Dale is an award winning songwriter and performer, born and raised on the south side of Chicago
Having played all over the United States, he also reaches international audiences with recent shows in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central America. The City of Los Angeles presented Jeff Dale with a Living Legend Blues Award to honor his 40 + years of performing and writing original roots music.
Before he could shave, Jeff was exposed to the music and live performances of Hound Dog Taylor, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor and many more practitioners of Chicago blues. “In the neighborhood where I grew up,” says Dale, “if you had your antennas up, you could feel the blues right there.”
Jeff’s long blues lineage includes accompanying legendary performers such as Pee Wee Crayton, David “Honeyboy” Edwards the last of the original Delta bluesmen, and Lowell Fulson. Finding tapes from a show Dale did with Fulson back in 1983, led to the 2021 release of Lowell Fulson Live! With Jeff Dale & The Blue Wave Band, which garnered so much airplay that it yielded a #1 track on the Roots Music Airplay Report and was nominated for a Blues Blast Music Award.
Dale has collected tales and advice in his travels through the world of the blues, being in the company of greats like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Willie Dixon, Etta James, Albert King and Clifton Chenier.
After releasing two albums of original material in the ‘80s with the Blue Wave Band, (winning a Best New Blues Band award and a Cashbox Feature Pick), Jeff reinvented himself in the 2000s with The South Woodlawners. The resulting album, Blues From The Southside Of My Soul (2009), was reviewed as “rowdy, loud, naughty-down-and-bawdy South Side Chicago style blues.” With every album since, Jeff Dale has consistently been delighting his ever-expanding fan base. Blues Room (2011) garnered international rave reviews and radio airplay. One notable track, “Stumblin’” was featured on the hit FX show “Justified.” The album Good Music (2014) followed, with more critical acclaim, awards, and airplay heaped on it. In 2016 Jeff produced a DVD/CD combo of the last recorded show by David “Honeyboy” Edwards with Jeff accompanying him, titled I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know. The film premiered at the Clarksdale Mississippi Film Festival as well as at the Chicago International Music and Movie Festival. The project won the 2017 Living Blues Best Blues DVD of the Year Award, All Music Guide’s “Best of 2017,” and was hailed all over the world as a priceless, historical treasure.
The Southside Lives (2017) is a back-porch blues album of Jeff Dale originals featuring Handy Award-winning harmonica player (and friend since the third grade) Jeff Stone. The album garnered an Independent Blues Award nomination among other accolades. Blues Power, released in 2019 was a Top 10 Roots Music Report airplay album, with spins on over 150 stations and had critics waxing rhapsodic worldwide. Jeff Dale & The South Woodlawner’s latest album Blood Red Moon was named “Best of 2022” and released at the end of 2024, Jeff’s collaboration album with blues sax man Bobby Hurricane Spencer, The Hurricane Dale Thang has already garnered over 140,000 Spotify streams.
The Midwest Record review captured Jeff’s essence when they described him as “A Chicago cat that uses that connection to add authenticity to his blues, Dale is really doing his own thing under the penumbra of old school west side Chicago blues but it’s not about homage, tribute, inspired by.... He’s playing from the gut.”
“On Blues Power, Dale has done his part to preserve his legacy as both a versatile Chicago bluesman as well as a disciple of that stripped-down Delta sound.”
- Robin Zimmerman Chicago Blues Guide
“Jeff Dale knows how to sing very convincingly, and his raw and fat slide solos goes through marrow and bone.”
- Walter Vanheuckelom-Concert Monkey (Belgium)
“The Chicago native has a tough vocal style and pulls no punches. It is always good to hear an all-original album and Jeff’s fans will be sure to enjoy this disc.”
-John Mitchell-Blues Blast Magazine
