Houston's Calvin Owens honored as

"Most Outstanding "
by world's leading blues magazine

Nominated as "Best Horn Player of The Year 2004" by The W.C. Handy Blues Awards

With the recent announcement of the 2004 Critics Awards from Living
Blues magazine, Houston trumpet player, bandleader, and producer Calvin
Owens has again been named the Most Outstanding Blues Musician in the
trumpet/saxophone/horn section category.

This prestigious recognition, which Owens has now won for the second
year in a row, is based on nominations and voting by writers and editors
affiliated with the internationally-distributed Living Blues. Now in
its thirty-second year of publication, the magazine is based at the
Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of
Mississippi.

Owens, who was previously the subject of a lengthy interview in a 1998
issue of Living Blues, is well known to readers of the magazine and many
blues fans around the world. Those with a sense of history may remember
Owens for his two long tours of duty with B. B. King, serving as B.B.'s first music director during the 1953-57 affiliation and then as
bandleader for King's orchestra from 1978 until 1984. Among the results
of their collaboration was a 1983 Grammy Award-winning album called
Blues n Jazz, for which Owens wrote all the arrangements.

However, in more recent years Owens has established himself as the
genius behind the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra, a large ensemble that
creates a vibrant blend of big band jazz, blues, funk, and other forms
(including collaborations with Zydeco players, rappers, and
Spanish-speaking Latinos). Over the course of seven CDs (including last
years The Best of Calvin Owens), all released on Houston's Sawdust
Alley Records label, the Calvin Owens Blues Orchestra has introduced its
distinctive sound to a whole new generation of fans.

The forthcoming Sawdust Alley CD by Calvin Owens, scheduled for release
in late 2002, is entitled The House Is Burning. Celebrating that brassy
blues sound for which Owens is famous, this disc will also feature guest
appearances by Houston-based vocalists Trudy Lynn and Gloria Edwards
(who, like Owens, are natives of Fifth Ward), as well as guitarist and
singer Leonard "Low Down" Brown.

Meanwhile, Owens is pleased to be honored again as a ?Most Outstanding?
musician in the annual Living Blues awards. As noted by Dr. Roger Wood,
a frequent contributing writer to the magazine (and author of the book
Down In Houston: Bayou City Blues, forthcoming from University of Texas
Press), Calvin Owens is a globally recognized trumpeter, a true maestro
of the blues, who links the best traditions of the past with a vital,
futuristic consciousness--a rare artist indeed. He is a great
Houstonian, someone of whom we all should be proud.