The Chicago Blues scene lost a great one today: Koko Taylor dead at age 80

Take down the lights on the Wang Dang Doodle stage at ChicagoFest. The Queen of the Blues is dead.

Koko Taylor, the Grammy Award-winning "Queen of the Blues," died Wednesday afternoon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital of complications from surgery, according to Marc Lipkin of Alligator Records. She was 80.

Taylor, born Coral Walton on a sharecropper's farm outside Memphis, came to Chicago in 1952 and worked as a house cleaner. She began to sit in with blues bands and in the early 1960s signed a contract with Chess Records after being approached by Willie Dixon. In 1965 she recorded her signature song, "Wang Dang Doodle."   [Chicago Tribune]

No one did it like Koko.

Let the good tmes roll, but not tonight.  Koko's gone.  Godspeed, Queen of the Blues.