Chris Pitts was born into a family of blues musicians. He had inherited a sound passed down through several generations of his family. When Pitts was five years old, he picked up his brother's acoustic guitar and started to play. His parents bought him his first electric guitar when he was thirteen. Pitts played his first show with his uncle, Steve Nelson, at This Is It, a blues club on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Later he became a regular player at the famous Memphis blues club, Wild Bill’s, where both his uncle and great-uncle, Clarence Nelson, played before him. Pitts has performed as a guitarist and vocalist with Bobby Rush, Latimore, and Blind Mississippi Morris. He joined the band Mississippi Bigfoot in 2016.
Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Chris Pitts at Bubba's Blues Corner during the King Biscuit Blues Festival; Helena, Arkansas, 2016
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
