Self-Taught Musician Battled Back From Coma to Win a Grammy

What's the secret to surviving? That's simple. Never give up. I should be dead from a hundred different situations, but here I am. The crack cocaine epidemic, guns, bouncing around from one home to another, violence, shattered bones—you name it, I fought back from it.

I remember coming out of the coma and not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality. I asked the nurse, am I OK? The nurse said no. My heart started sinking. But within five minutes, I began to rebound. I remember moving my toes and thinking, OK, this is how I'm going to come back. One step at a time.

AARP Membership— $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal

Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine.

Join Now

John Mosely / Ken Weinstein / Big Hassle Media

The Fall: Rising out of foster care to gain early acclaim as a blues musician, the artist suffered a near-fatal car crash in 1999 that put him in a coma, killed his record contracts and sidelined him for years.

The Comeback: He strummed and sang his way to winning Grammys for best contemporary blues album in 2017 and 2019.

My dad had me when he was 63. And I think that had a lot to do with my mentality, because I was raised by a guy who was born in 1905, and back then there were just no excuses. He had problems, but he gave me that fighter instinct. Growing up in Massachusetts until I was 12, then Berkeley and Oakland, California, I was the eighth of 15 children. I was in foster care by the time I was 13. My best friend was murdered running around with the wrong kids. I ended up on the ground one day with someone holding a 9-millimeter pistol to my head. But I somehow always knew there would be a way out.

Relationships are what make you. I made friends as a runaway at age 12, and those are still my closest friendships. There's a guy I know named Malcolm Spellman; we've been friends for 40 years. We've done everything together since the projects. He's a television writer and producer now, but he was there when I was in the car accident and when I reinvented myself a few times after that. You need that grounding influence.

If you have that ground beneath you, you can resurrect yourself. Like, with me and music. I taught myself music as a kid. I snuck into classrooms at UC Berkeley to learn as much as I could. I saved myself, song by song. But then after the crash, I had to do it all over again. My hand didn't work. My guitar-playing hand! I can't move it at the wrist, and I can't really move my fingers. I actually had to stop playing with my fingers, and now I play with my entire hand. I call it the claw. I went from fine playing to sort of attacking the instrument. It's very rugged, but it improved my sound.