Harmonica player and vocalist Rick Estrin is a preservationist of the dynamic sound of post-war electric blues who made his bones playing harmonica in Little Charlie & The Nightcats, the Bay Area band he formed with his friend Little Charlie Baty in 1976. Over the next four decades, Little Charlie & The Nightcats carved out a niche as one of the liveliest bands on the modern blues circuit. Once Baty retired in 2008, Estrin carried on as the leader of the band, leading them through a series of albums for Alligator that spanned 2009's Twisted to 2024's The Hits Keep Coming. Rick Estrin was born in San Francisco, California in 1949, and even as a boy he frequented the tough Market Street area, falling under the spell of music by Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, Nina Simone, Champion Jack Dupree, and others, and when he picked up the harmonica at age 15, he was already immersed in the urban Black culture around him. By 18, he was proficient enough on the harp to jam with the likes of Lowell Fulson and Travis Phillips. After a move to Chicago, Estrin worked with Eddie Taylor, Sam Lay, Johnny Young, and Johnny Littlejohn, and even jammed with Muddy Waters. Moving back to the Bay Area, Estrin met guitarist Little Charlie Baty, and they joined forces to form Little Charlie & the Nightcats in 1976, a high-powered electric urban blues band, and the group stayed together for some 30 years, touring and recording, issuing their first album, All the Way Crazy, in 1987 (the band would go on to release some nine albums on Alligator Records). Estrin developed into a brilliant blues harp soloist, and he had become an equally good blues songwriter, drawing comparisons to Willie Dixon and Cab Calloway, and with his flamboyant stage personality, sharp sense of humor, and a singing voice that drew the best from the material, he became the consummate frontman for the band -- to the point that many thought he was Little Charlie. When Baty (the actual Little Charlie) left the band, Estrin, the Nightcats' longtime rhythm section of J. Hansen and Lorenzo Farrell, and new guitarist Kid Anderson kept the gig going under the new name Rick Estrin & the Nightcats, releasing a debut album, Twisted, under that name on Alligator Records in 2009. One Wrong Turn followed on Alligator in 2012, and two years later the group released the live album You Asked for It...Live! They returned with their third studio album, Groovin' in Greaseland, in August 2017, which was quickly followed in 2019 by Contemporary. After a five-year hiatus, Rick Estrin & The Night Cats released The Hits Keep Coming in 2024, staying true to their colorful blend of blues and soul while finding space for a doo wop cover of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows." ~ Steve Leggett