Grapevine Music Agency - representing some of the finest roots musicians from the UK and North America. Folk, Blues, Country, Americana.

Quietly modest Jim may be the best bluesman in the UK - although you’d never guess he wasn’t straight out of the deep south - great, great music!

"This is what roots music needs so badly, a superb musician, having a good time and sharing it with the audience." Peter Baker, Blues In Britain

"Superb performer, great songwriter" Paul Jones, BBC Radio 2

"The finest country blues player in the U.K." Ben Andrews

Jim Crawford was born in Bury, Lancashire, U.K. in 1958. His father was a drunken Irishman, his Mother wasn't. At the age of four he began lessons on the cornet only to have his hopes of becoming the next Louis Armstrong dashed when he was involved in a bizarre accident involving a mouse and a fish tank. By age seven his aim was to play football for England. His complete inability to kick a ball more than a few feet plus his skill in being able to run only in slow motion, soon put paid to that idea. By age ten his mind was made up. He was going to be an ASTRONAUT!! As he couldn't even spell the word astronaut, the writing was firmly on the wall for that idea too. After several years in a blurry wilderness, at the age of seventeen, he finally hit on the bright idea of becoming an itinerant singer/ songwriter. He's looked back ever since. By sheer good luck he has ended up living in the picturesque village of Appledore on the North Devon coast with his wife (the renown sculptor) Maggie Curtis, his beloved old hound dog "Ry Cooder", several chickens, and a hive full of bees.

Jim Crawford is something of a Blues enigma. A shy and retiring man who readily admits that recording studios fill him with dread and that he’d rather go fishing with his dog for company, has, none the less, toured much of Europe and the U.S.A captivating audiences with his intimate blues style.

Softly spoken, Jim totally surprises his audience when he breaks into a number with a resonant, barrelhouse blues vocal and for years has been revered among professional musicians as a consummate finger picker and slide guitarist.

He first came to the attention of a wider blues audience when invited to record a session for the BBC’s Paul Jones Show. When quizzed by Mr. Jones about recent concert work we glimpsed the sense of humour that lights up Jims live shows when he wryly replied, “I've just played at the Appledore school fete where I was second in the popularity stakes to a bouncy castle !”

Jim is currently writing material for a new solo album “Roots and Originals” which will be available along with his previous albums "Blues Boy" and "When the Rains Came". The title track from “When the Rains Came” was covered by Beth Rowley on her No1 album “Little Dreamer” (along with tracks by Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson).

Our View: A great musician with a winning personality. A very talented guitarist, equally at home finger picking or playing the meanest slide imaginable, you won’t find a guitarist in Britain who doesn’t rate Jim as one of the best. On stage his warm hearted dialogue with the audience never fails to impress.