Marcia Ball honed her powerful singing and rollicking keyboard chops while growing up in Vinton, Louisiana. After attending Louisiana State University, she moved to Austin, Texas, in the late 1970s. Ball quickly became an important and popular figure on the Austin music scene, first as the leader of Freda & the Firedogs and later as a solo artist signed to Capitol Records. Her recording debut was the progressive country album Circuit Queen (1978).

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In the 1980s, Ball’s signature piano style—an energetic blend of zydeco, swamp blues, Louisiana blues, and boogie-woogie—fully emerged. She signed with Rounder Records and released a succession of acclaimed albums, including Soulful Dress (1984), Hot Tamale Baby (1985), Gatorhythms (1989), Let Me Play with Your Poodle (1997), and Sing It! (1998), the Grammy-nominated collaboration with Tracy Nelson and Irma Thomas.

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In 2001, Ball moved to Alligator Records and released several award-winning albums, including Presumed Innocent (2001), which won the Handy Award for “Blues Album of the Year,” the Grammy-nominated So Many Rivers (2003), as well as Live! Down the Road (2005) and Peace, Love & BBQ (2008), both of which earned Grammy nominations.

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Ball received the Blues Music Award for “Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year – Female” in 2004 and won “Best Blues Instrumentalist – Keyboards” in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. She was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2018 and later received the Blues Music Award’s Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Award in 2012, 2015, and 2019. She continues to perform at clubs and festivals around the world.