Billy
Branch
Emmy Award Winner·3× Grammy Nominee·Blues Hall of Fame
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About
“After learning from the masters, he developed his own, instantly recognizable, signature sound — powerful, melodic, funky, jazzy and contemporary.”
Billy Branch — Emmy Award winner, 3-time Grammy Award® nominee, retired Grammy® governor, and winner of multiple Blues Music Awards — recently received the 2026 B.M.A. Best Harmonica Award and the 2026 Living Blues Award. He's also received multiple B.M.A. Keeping the Blues Alive Awards for his fifty-year International Blues in Schools program.
Branch is an honored recipient of the Mellon Foundation's 2026 Taproot Artists Fellowship, recognizing him as an American Culture-Bearer — honoring a 50-year Blues career that began with his seven-year tenure as Willie Dixon's harmonica player. He is a 2020 inductee into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame Museum in Memphis, and serves on the Board of Directors of both the Blues Foundation and the Little Walter Foundation.
