It's a Southern Blues Party sponsored by Hard Rock Casino Rockford! *For the first time in a long time, we're offering a rain sight this year, rain or shine. Whether it's Levings Park or the Rockford Women's Club we'll always share details here on our business page.
*As always we'll have activities for kids including a bouncy house, face painting, cartoon characters.
*Soul Food Truck Vendors, some of your favorites.
National Recording Artist and Composer Sir Charles Jones, a collaborator of throwback and modern in his traditional Southern style of R&B, was born Charles Jones, Jr. on April 25, 1973, in Akron, Ohio, to composer/pianist Charles Jones Sr. and Blanche Jones, a civil rights activist from Birmingham. He was reared, however, from an early age in Ensley, Alabama, and began teaching himself the rudiments of music (jazz, gospel, blues) and music production. Jones attended Ensley High School from 1987 to 1989.
From 1994 to 1999, Jones toured as a background singer with composer Marvin Sease on what was known as the Chitlin’ Circuit across the South. He then relocated to Jackson, Mississippi. Jones’s debut album, Sir Charles Jones, was released in 2000. Jones’ sophomore album, Love Machine, spent 57 weeks on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. It peaked at no. 28. Other Jones hits included “Friday,” “Is Anybody Lonely?” “Just Can’t Let Go,” “For Better or Worse,” and “Just Like Fire.”
In 2003, after a motorcycle accident, Jones was in a coma for several days. After recovering, he returned to composing, and three years later, in 2006, he released the albums. Thank You for Holding On and Sir Charles Jones & Friends. Then in 2008, he came out with The My Story that included melodious ballads “Happy Anniversary” and “You’re My Latest, My Greatest (Inspiration)” and the dance jam “I Came to Party” which peaking at no. 13 on the Billboard US Blues chart. The music DVD, Sir Charles Jones: His Life & Times – Undisputed King of Southern Soul and A Southern Soul Party, peaked at no. 11 on the US Blues chart in 2010 and in 2014, he released the album, Portrait of a Balladeer.
In 2017, Jones was part of the National artist review with “the Blues is Alright Tour” at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida. From 2018 to 2021, Jones released six albums, The Masterpiece (2018) on his label, Southern King Entertainment; Sir Jones & Family Vol.1 (2019), Intimacy (2020), and The Jones Boyz: 2 Kings (2020), a collaborative project with Jeter Jones, The Chosen One (2021), and Caught Cheating (2021).
The recipient of a plethora of awards and accolades, Sir Charles Jones received the International Entertainer of the year and the B.B. King Achievement Award. The Blues Critic staff selected Sir Charles Hunter as “the 2020 Southern Soul Artist of the Year.”
Leon Rogers Host/ Comedian
You may know him from the WGCI morning show with Kendra G and Kyle Santillian, or maybe you’ve gotten to know him from his new late night talk show on FOX 32, “Later with Leon.”
But what do we really know about Leon Rogers? The man who calls himself the “Destined Legend” is a full-time DJ, part-time comedian, actor appearing in Barbershop 1 and 2, and Tuskegee Airmen to name a few.
He’s a Chicago born and bred performer who took his love for comedy from the classroom to the stage, and it all started for Leon as a young private stationed in Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma.
We met up with Leon at his favorite restaurant in Lansing, “The Continental Pancake House.”
“I knew I wanted to do a job entertaining people,” Leon said. “The name of the club where I first cut my teeth was called ‘All Jokes Aside.”
"One day I went and did an open mic and I was absolutely terrible,” he said. “It was horrible, so horrible that I told my last joke and my father, all you hear is him saying ‘I came all the way down here for this?’ And the crowd goes crazy. They thought I planned it, but he was really pissed and so I get off the stage and he says you going to keep your job at the Board of Education cause this is not for you.”
“If I didn’t really want to do it, I would have hurt my spirit but all of the greats -- Bernie Mac, Cedric the Entertainer -- went there so I kept coming back and it started clicking,” Leon said.
Soon he became a regular on stage and that lead to some high-profile appearances on comedy shows including ShowTime at the Apollo, BET's Comic View, P. Diddy's The Bad Boys of Comedy, and Cedric the Entertainer’s Starting Lineup.
But Leon can't talk about his success without mentioning people who helped him along the way, including his family -- wife Nicole and his daughters Ashley, Autumn and Addison.
"I'm loving Later with Leon. It's a dream as a standup comedian. You always dream of having your own late night talk show so when they first came to me and said what do you think about late night talk show? I said ‘yes!’ But I gotta be able to be me,” Leon said.
“I'm tuned in, I'm locked in, it's Barbershop talk coming to TV, that's the flavor I like to bring to TV,” he added. “I always feel like I was destined to be something great. It isn't over yet, we still got a lot more work.”
Event Venue
1420 S, Pierpont Ave., Rockford, IL, United States