Nora Jean Bruso
| Nora Jean Bruso | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Elnora Jean Wallace |
| Also known as | Nora Jean Wallace Nora Jean |
| Born |
June 21, 1956 Greenwood, Mississippi, United States |
| Genres | Chicago blues, electric blues |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter |
| Years active | 1970s–present |
| Labels | Red Hurricane Records, Severn Records |
Nora Jean 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.
Bruso 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.
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