Manuel Casado

He stumbled upon the blues at sixteen, listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins and Bonnie Raitt, while imitating in self-taught fashion what he heard on his favourite records, especially rhythm&blues. He immersed himself in the music of the fifties and at eighteen, at the beginning of the nineties, he put together his first rock’n’roll band, through which he entered the world of music: “We were all friends and we had the time of our lives… we had more enthusiasm than knowledge, it was great”. Other line-ups then followed and, although he assures us that in truth he has never worked professionally in music and that his trade is that of a panel beater and car painter, his CV has nothing to envy in that of any veteran of the Barcelona scene, across a range of styles such as jump blues, the most genuine rhythm&blues, jive or swing, all of them heirs of the blues. It is a music that captivated him when he was a lad: “It is so simple, so spontaneous and apparently so basic that it always leaves you room to say what you feel in its language”.