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Biography
Ellen McIlwaine (born in Nashville, Tennessee, on 1 October 1945; died in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on June 23, 2021) was an American-born singer-songwriter and musician remembered for her career as a solo singer, songwriter and slide guitarist (in Canada from 1987). In 2019, McIlwaine was awarded Toronto Blues Society's "Blues with a Feeling" Lifetime Achievement Award.
Adopted by missionaries and raised in Kobe, Japan, on moving back to the United States McIlwaine bought a guitar, beginning a stage career in Atlanta, Georgia in the mid-1960s. In 1966, she had a stint in New York City's Greenwich Village where she opened every night at the Cafe Au Go Go, playing with Jimi Hendrix, and opening for Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Big Joe Williams. She returned to Atlanta to form the band Fear Itself, a psychedelic blues rock band.
