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Download my albums from iTunes! or Download my albums from MSN! or Download my albums from eMusic!Ashford Gordon was born in Starkville, Mississippi August 24, 1948 to a family related to the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians located in the hill country of northeastern Mississippi. He spent his early years on a 500 acre dairy farm where he rose with the sun to milk the cows and perform other chores to aid his Great-Grandparents. While there where electric lights in the home, there was no indoor plumbing and the youngster had to gather wood each day for the wood burning kitchen stove. Needless to say, there was no music heard on this farm. It was all business all the time.Gordon's parents moved to St. Louis, Missouri in the early 1950s where the young Ashford lived in the first federally funded housing projects in the United States. However, the large housing projects soon proved uncontrollable and impervious to police patrols resulting in the eventual razing of the entire group of buildings. During this period, the future blues musician was schooled in a small Catholic parish school by nuns who discovered the young lad could sing. This led to his first public performance at Christmas eve midnight mass in 1956. Ashford's earliest blues influences were to be heard on the black radio stations around St. Louis. Artists such as Little Walter Jacobs, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry streamed into the Gordon home daily.Gordon's father, a construction laborer, relocated his family to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1959 exposing his young son to a brand new world. Attending a series of high schools, Ashford eventually broke the color barrier becoming the first black student to attend Westmont High School in Campbell, California. During his high school years, Gordon earned five letters in sports, played on two undefeated championship teams, was elected senior class president, served as salutatorian at his graduation services and was a member of the school's state championship chamber choir.Although he had grown up singing gospel music in his family's churches, the young Gordon also got hooked on Rock and Roll. His early career focused on gospel music and he performed throughout the West Coast until the early 70s when he moved to New York and found work in various Supper Club and casual night club gigs throughout New York and New Jersey as a bass player, guitarist and vocalist. Moving back to California in 1979 he founded his first Rock and Roll band with an emphasis on blues, however success on any scale was hard to find and he went to work for the local telephone company to support his growing family.Continuing to work gigs at night while maintaining his day job, Ashford fronted a number of regional groups through the 80s finally catching on in Santa Cruz, California in the early 80s until a disastrous divorce and subsequent short-lived second marriage led him to the love of his life, Dale Ecker, who has served as his manager as well as his wife for the past 20 years. It was Dale who suggested he found his first blues band in Turlock, California in 1992. This band, Too Late Tomorrow worked steadily and caught the attention of a Central California promoter who was looking for a band to back the late seminal blues guitarist Louisiana Guitar Red who became a mentor to Ashford's emerging Mississippi blues sensibilities.Working behind Red (Cardell Boyett) to critical and popular acclaim, Ashford honed his blues guitar technique and blues vocals to a smooth but powerful edge causing Lynn Sampson, a Stanislaus County Connections reviewer to state in 1994..."Gordon's singing is excellent. His phrasing is incomparable. His intonation is flawless. He has enough composure on stage to never rush the beat or jump on the first pulse of each measure. His tone quality is earthy but not coarse. I could listen to Gordon sing for hours". In 1995, Gordon and his group backed Louisiana Guitar Red at the prestigious Monterey Blues Festival and that same year Gordon founded the Ashford Gordon Band in Ventura, California and went to work recording his first CD, Nothin' But Trouble. At the same time Gordon's oldest son Gabriel Gordon broke out in New York as the leader of a rock outfit, 12th Planet and soon was touring with Natalie Merchant as her guitarist and backing vocalist revealing the passing of the mantle of Gordon's unique technique on to a young lion made in his own image.In 2000 Gordon released his second CD, Somewhere Down The Line prompting Bill Locey, music reviewer for the Los Angeles Times to say of Ashford in a September 2000 review..."Gordon and his dexterous digits has been playing locally for the last several years and is one of the few working musicians who actually make money at their night jobs". In 2002 Ashford Gordon and his son Gabriel Gordon released a collaborative CD, Planetary Man on the Surprise Truck label featuring six Ashford tunes and six Gabriel tunes. Ashford has another talented son in Hip-Hop rising star Prince Lefty, whose smooth flow and hard-knocks story is capturing the attention of many music executives. Prince Lefty (Joshua Gordon) is currently serving a term in the New Folsom Prison in Northern California and is scheduled to return to performing and recording in late 2007. Check out Joshua's site at www.myspace.com/princelefty.The Ventura County Star's Time Out music magazine columnist Bill Locey recently said of Ashford Gordon in December 2006..."The Mississippi native is a living exponent of that state's most famous export...".