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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: ERROL LINTON
Errol Linton is a south London based harmonica player, singer and artist.
Mixing blues, boogie, reggae and more, Errol has been playing for more than
30 years.
Long hailed as ‘the future of British blues’, Errol and his band recently won
the UK Blues Federation Blues Challenge, an accolade leading to selection to
represent the UK in the Memphis International Blues Challenge (January
2024), and the European Blues Challenge in Portugal (April 2024).
Ian McKenzie spoke to Errol on the telephone at his home in London.
EL: Hello.
BiTS: Is that Errol?
EL: Hi. Yeah. How you doing?
BiTS: Hello, it's Ian speaking, Errol.
EL: Hiya.
BiTS: Are you able to talk now?
EL: Yeah, sure. I have to turn
the radio off, that's all.
BiTS: Okay. I'm doing this for my
magazine Blues in the South.
EL: Oh, okay, it’s a magazine. Cool.
That's fine.
BiTS: Let's make a start, shall we?
EL: Yes, sure. Fire away. I'm ready.
BiTS: Reading about you, you've
been being called the future of British
blues for about 30 years now. How did you actually start playing blues?
EL: When I was a teenager, a friend of mine called Tyrone Balkissoon played drums in school,
so he was already a musician, and he sold me a harmonica in my late teens, and that's how it
kind of really started.
BiTS: Who did you listen to when you first started?
EL: I never really knew the blues. I mean, my dad used to have some old Louis Jordan stuff on
tape. My brother had one B.B. King album, the one where he's looking into the music shop. You
know, the one that talks about going to see the Queen of England, [singing] ‘better not stay
down, you’ve got to keep on’. You know, that one, that album with that song? That was the
nearest to the blues, but when my mate sold me the harmonica, I started noticing a lot of
