From time to time you discover a relatively obscure but excellent bluesman who released a few albums on minor labels and whose existence you didn't even know about, until a friend (thanks to “Captain” Blue DeVille, to give to Caesar) mention a name : “You should listen to this one, I'm sure you'd appreciate...” You obtain a few albums recorded by the “name” and you get a blow right in the face !
That's what happened to me recently. The name's Cardell Boyette (sometimes spelled Cordell), a patronymic exhaling the nice flavor of his native Louisiana, but he's also known as Louisiana “Guitar” Red (the “Guitar” nickname being essential to distinguish him from Louisiana Red aka Iverson Minter).
Born in Louisiana in 1928, Boyette learned to play piano in his youth before switching later to guitar and moving to Los Angeles in the early 1950s or 1960s (info sources vary). There he entered a top blues school : he played in particular behind Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Tina Turner, J.D. Nicholson or Ray Agee… He even recorded a single as Louisiana “Guitar” Red with George "Harmonica" Smith in the late 1960s.