Vance Kelly (born January 24, 1954) is an American soul blues singer and guitarist who has performed regularly at various music venues in the Chicago area, chief among them being the 1815, Checkerboard Lounge, Rosa's Lounge, Kingston Mines, Buddy Guy's Legends, and B.L.U.E.S.
A music journalist noted of Kelly, "Like Primer, he combines an enquiring eye for a song with a moderately conservative taste in sound, producing music that lives by the principles of classic Chicago bar blues yet is not enslaved by the past".
Early life
Kelly was born in the Near West Side community area of Chicago. His father was a gospel musician, and his uncle, LeRoy McCauley, was a part-time blues musician.
Kelly's own interest in and talent for performing music were on display at an early age; he was playing guitar by the age of seven, despite never having had a formal lesson. Then, at the age of 10, Kelly performed blues for the first time at a Chicago school. As a teenager, he sat in at various clubs on Chicago's South Side and later appeared both as a solo artist and as a sideman in those clubs, backing such artists as the West-Side singer Mary Lane when he was 15. It was during this time that Kelly developed his unique "ringing" guitar sound, which raised his profile among members of Chicago's blues community.
