A memorial celebration has been scheduled in honor of late blues guitarist Michael "Iron Man" Burks, who passed away last week of an apparent heart attack. The memorial and musical celebration of Burks' life will be held on Sunday, May 20, 2012 at Riverwoods On The Ouachita, on Bradley Ferry Road in Burks' hometown of Camden, Arkansas.

The event is open to the public, and kicks off - rain or shine - at 3:00 PM CST; guests are encouraged to bring instruments, lawn chairs, and coolers. Instead of sending flowers, the guitarist's family has asked that donations be made in Burks' name to The Blues Foundation's HART Fund, which helps out blues musicians with health care needs.

Burks was raised in a musical family, and first picked up a guitar at the age of two; by the age of five, he was learning to play songs from his father's record collection. By his early teens, Burks was fronting his own band as well as backing many of the blues and R&B talents that performed at his family's nightclub. After a lengthy hiatus from music as Burks raised his own family, he began performing again in the early 1990s, eventually signing with Alligator Records, which released three critically-acclaimed albums by the talented guitarist.

Burks earned his "Iron Man" nickname by delivering hours-long, physically-demanding performances night after night, his soulful vocals matched by a fierce, unique guitar style that would leave audiences breathless. A charismatic performer, nobody left a Michael Burks show without a smile on their face, and the artist would climb behind the wheel of his van and drive hundreds of miles to his next show. A blue-collar bluesman with immense six-string skills and a growing confidence in his songwriting ability, Burks was the living, breathing, touring embodiment of the blues, and will be missed...

Photo courtesy Alligator Records

OK, so our blog headline this week is a pretty bad pun, but as the Billboard magazine blues charts for the week ending May 19, 2012 proves, the Tedeschi Trucks Band is still holding strong. The band's Grammy® Award-winning Revelator album sits at number seven, its lowest position (I think) in the year it's spent dominating the chart, while the upcoming, yet-to-be-released live album moves up a spot to number six on the strength of pre-release sales. I thoroughly expect it to hit number one at the end of May when it actually hits store shelves.

Otherwise, there's not much happening on this week's chart. Tab Benoit's career-spanning Legacy collection drops out of the top ten, displaced by Beverly McClellan's on-and-off-the-charts album Fear Nothing. With Benoit winning multiple Blues Music Awards this week, including the huge "B.B. King Entertainer of the Year" award, I expect Legacy to bounce back up the chart. Ditto for Revelator, considering that Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks also walked away with Blues Music Awards last Thursday night...

Here are this week's Billboard Top Ten blues albums, ranked by sales:

10. Beverly McClellan - Fear Nothing (Oarfin Records)
9. Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton - Play The Blues (Warner Brothers)
8. Hugh Laurie - Let Them Talk (Warner Brothers)
7. Tedeschi Trucks Band - Revelator (Sony Masterworks)
6. Tedeschi Trucks Band - Everybody's Talking (Live) (Sony Legacy)
5. Various Artists - Back In New Orleans (Starbucks)
4. Walter Trout - Blues For The Modern Daze (Provogue Records)
3. Gary Clark, Jr. - The Bright Lights EP (Warner Brothers)
2. Dr. John - Locked Down (Nonesuch Records)
1. Bonnie Raitt - Slipstream (Redwing Records)

New releases this week: The Mannish Boys' Double Dynamite (Delta Groove); Paul Butterfield's Better Days/It All Comes Back (Edsel Records); The Nighthawks' Damn Good Time! (Severn Records)

Photo of the Mannish Boys' Double Dynamite courtesy Delta Groove Music

The music world lost a bona fide legend this weekend with the death of bass player and songwriter Donald "Duck" Dunn. In Tokyo for a series of performances, Dunn passed away in his sleep on Sunday morning, May 13, 2012. Dunn was 70 years old.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1942, Dunn went to high school with fellow musicians Steve Cropper and Don Nix. Enamored of the rhythm and blues music they heard on the radio and in West Memphis nightclubs, the three men formed the Royal Spades with friends like Packy Axton and Wayne Jackson and began gigging in the Memphis area. Later changing their name to the Mar-Keys, the band scored a minor hit in 1961 with the instrumental "Last Night," released by Axton's mother Estelle's Satellite Records label. Cropper would be the first to jump ship, but when the Mar-Keys broke up several years later, Dunn would reunite with the guitarist as a member of the Stax Records' house band Booker T & the MGs.

With Booker T & the MGs, Dunn's fluid bass lines provided the heavy bottom end sound that was one of the band's hallmarks. Aside from their own chart hits like "Green Onions," the MGs backed up a literal "who's who" of 1960s-era R&B and soul stars, including Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding, among others, including bluesman Albert King. Dunn would later get involved in production for the Stax and Volt labels, as well as contributing to the staff's songwriting efforts.

When Stax Records went belly-up in the 1970s, Dunn was one of the last men standing, and he slipped into a career as a session player almost effortlessly. Throughout the years, Dunn brought his unique bass sound to recordings by artists as varied as Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Freddie King, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, Bill Withers, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among many others. The bassist played with Cropper as part of the recently-deceased Levon Helm's RCO All-Stars, and appeared in the popular 1980 film The Blues Brothers playing himself as a member of the band. Dunn reprised his role in the 1998 movie Blues Brothers 2000 and would later tour as part of the Blues Brothers Band.

In recent years, Dunn was semi-retired, but still did occasional shows with Booker T Jones and Steve Cropper as Booker T & the MGs. Dunn was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the MGs, and received a lifetime achievement Grammy® in 2007. On his Facebook page, Cropper posted "today I lost my best friend, the World has lost the best guy and bass player to ever live." We thank Donald "Duck" Dunn for his lifelong contribution to rock, soul, and blues music and our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and many fans.

Booker T & the MGs photo from the Frank Diggs Collection, courtesy Getty Images (Dunn at left, holding bass guitar)

The Blues Foundation held its annual awards shindig last night and in between performances, they announced the winners of the organization's 33rd annual Blues Music Awards, held at the Cook Convention Center in Memphis. Guitarist Tab Benoit was a big winner at the ceremony, walking off with the coveted B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Award, among others, while Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, both alone and as part of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, earned a number of awards. See who else won a Blues Music Award this year...

Here on the About.com Blues website, we recently posted some fresh album reviews. The Reverend takes a look at Dr. John's Locked Down; produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the album is a late-career tour-de-force for the New Orleans musical legend. The Rev says that Eric Bibb's Deeper In The Well is a "pleasant and entertaining" collection of "blues, folk, and country sounds that have their roots in the big cities and the rural back roads of the country." Guest author Steve Pick reviewed the second album from Peter Karp and Sue Foley, Beyond the Crossroads, and if you missed it, don't forget to check out our list of New Blues CDs to see what you're going to spend your money on this month!

Tedeschi Trucks Band photo by Scott Gries/Image Direct, courtesy Getty Images