About
Billy
Branch
Biography
Billy Branch is an Emmy Award winner, a three time Grammy Award® nominee, and a retired Grammy® governor. He's won multiple Blues Music Awards (B.M.A.s), most recently winning both the 2026 Best Harmonica Instrumentalist Award and the 2026 Living Blues Critics' Award. Billy is also a proud recipient of multiple B.M.A. Keeping the Blues Alive Awards for his forty-five year old Blues in Schools program.
In addition to his numerous humanitarian awards, Branch is most proud of being a 2020 inductee into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame Museum in Memphis. Branch is on the Board of Directors of both the Blues Foundation and the Little Walter Foundation, and is a recipient of an Addy Award — like an Oscar for TV ads — for his on-screen commercial work.
Billy's recording with Dave Spector is included in the Grammy Museum's Woody Guthrie installation entitled Songs of Conscience, Sounds of Freedom. Billy is an honored recipient of the 2026 Mellon Foundation's Taproot Artists & Community Trust Alliance Fellowship, recognizing him as an American Culture-Bearer. He used part of that award to fund a daytime senior citizens' Blues event on the Southside of Chicago, a Blues in Schools concert for 500 Chicago students, and a community concert featuring his new album, The Blues Is My Biography.
"After learning from the masters, he developed his own, instantly recognizable, signature sound — powerful, melodic, funky, jazzy and contemporary."
Career
Career
Branch's touring career began in the late Seventies with his seven-year tenure as harmonica player in the Willie Dixon All Stars. He has spent nearly fifty years presenting America's rich cultural Blues heritage to audiences around the globe: from the Halls of Parliament in the Republic of Turkey, to the beautiful countries of South America, Central America, and Mexico, to Europe, to Australia, to the exotic countries of Asia, including Japan and the People's Republic of China. Billy's groundbreaking tours of China introduced authentic Chicago Blues to millions of young Chinese fans.
Billy is one of the last living bluesmen to have been mentored by the original blues giants like Willie Dixon, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Bo Diddley, and others. He appears on over 300 recordings, fifteen under his own name. Branch has recorded with such luminaries as Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Johnny Winter, Lou Rawls, Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo, Kingfish, Jim Irsay, and many others.
Acting + More
Acting & Collaborations
He is the principal actor and narrator in the recently released epic audio drama Moja (mojasaga.com), a comprehensive historical fiction saga spanning five generations of the fictional Ellis family, chronicling African American music from Africa to present day USA.
Billy Branch was honored to be a member of the Jim Irsay Collection Band that featured Rock & Roll Hall of Famers like Vince Gill, Stephen Stills, Ann Hart, Kevin Cronin (REO Speedwagon), Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. (See more at jimirsaycollection.com)