Eddie Kirkland
American blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer, and songwriter (1928–2011)
Eddie Kirkland (August 16, 1923 – February 27, 2011) was an American electric blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer, and songwriter.
Kirkland, known as the "Gypsy of the Blues" for his rigorous touring schedules, played and toured with John Lee Hooker from 1949 to 1962. After his period of working in tandem with Hooker he pursued a successful solo career, recording for RPM Records, Fortune Records, Volt Records, and King Records, sometimes under the stage name Eddie Kirk. Kirkland continued to tour, write and record albums until his death in February 2011. His last performance, the night before his death, was at Dunedin Brewery, Florida.
Biography
Kirkland was born in Kingston, Jamaica to a mother, aged 11 (Kirkland was raised believing his mother was his sister and he was in his early twenties when the truth was revealed to him by his mother), and first heard the blues from "field hollers", and raised in Dothan, Alabama until 1935, when he stowed away in the Sugar Girls Medicine Show tent truck and left town. Blind Blake influenced him the most in those early days. He was placed on the chorus line with "Diamond Tooth Mary" McLean. When the show closed a year later, he was in Dunkirk, Indiana, where he briefly returned to school.
He joined the United States Army during World War II. Racism in the military, he said, led him to seek out the devil.
“Eddie Kirkland” enters the record as american blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer, and songwriter (1928–2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Eddie, Kirkland and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Eddie Kirkland” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Eddie, Kirkland and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q984487. VIAF identifies the subject as 50709982. The Library of Congress control number is n95065345. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2011, 1949 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eddie Kirkland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.