"Born With a Broken Heart" by Kenny Wayne Shepherd

This song is a favourite of mine, which explains so much; shown here recorded before a live audience in 1996, Born With a Broken Heart is the first song on Kenny Wayne Shepherd's first album Ledbetter Heights, and showed that straight out of the gate the boy was a man.

The actual Ledbetter Heights - also known as 'St. Paul's Bottoms' - is a traditionally black neighbourhood and former red-light district in Shreveport*, an area which spawned blues god Huddie 'Leadbelly' Ledbetter and was later named after him in an effort to rehabilitate the district's image...
All of which begs the question: what kind of a sorry state would a neighbourhood have to be in that naming it after a blues musician would improve it?

*Kenny Wayne Shepherd's hometown, yo.
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Happy Birthday Kenny Wayne Shepherd

A blues prodigy, self-taught by age 7, Kenny Wayne Shepherd recorded his first album Ledbetter Heights at age 17. In it, not only is his playing as sharp as a seasoned veteran's, his vocals growl and yelp and ache more like a man of 71 than 17. His second album, Trouble Is..., holds the record for the longest duration on the American Blues chart.

Today at 33 he is the author of five albums and tours extensively, often playing with the likes of B. B. King and Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown. In 2006 he married Hannah, the eldest daughter of Mel Gibson and together they have two children.
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