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Ross Mckerrell has sung and played guitar since 14 years age when he first started to be interested in the traditional music of his native land, Scotland.
He played with acoustic groups in the town of Edinburgh where he grew up.
At 20 years age he discovered the Bristol folk scene in the south-west of England and became part of many (always acoustic) groups, prominently influenced by the American blues of the Thirties and Forties.
After having heard the recordings of the American mandolin player David Grisman he acquires a mandolin and starts to learn 'jazz'.
Like many of his compatriots, and in particular its forefathers, Ross Mckerrell has lived the greatest part of his life elsewhere than Scotland.
(An ancient plot of three generations has unrelentingly brought him to France and to approach more and more the mythical village of Django Reinhardt. He claims to have met Django in a dream and it is persuaded that the Master would have entrusted a secret of capital importance.)
 Coming to France in 1982 he participated in electrified formations like "Opening Flash" and also the more jazzy as with" Why Not Mister Domino ".
 He can still occasionally be seen with the traditional Irish group "Steam Up! ".
Ross Mckerrells repertoire includes the music of Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy and his influences include Bert Jansch, Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Pierre Bensusan and Birelli Lagrene.
Without having ever put a foot on the American soil, he travels regularly along Mississippi with his two companions, Mox Gowland and Peters Day using his guitar like life a buoy.

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My first harmonica came to me on Brighton beach. It was a sunny bank holiday weekend in the early sixties. There I was, hanging out with the beatniks when, all of a sudden (as they say), from our left we saw, walking slowly down the beach, a gang of, 30, maybe 40, "Mods" - you know 60's style fashion victims - crew cuts, Lambreta's - remember Tommy from the Who? You get the picture? Here we were six or seven longhairs, blue jeans, roll-neck sweaters & corduroy jackets, the anti-thesis of MODernity. Nobody said anything, but you could feel the tension mounting. Then low and behold (now nobody says that anymore!) from our right, appear 50 or 60 leather clad Rockers - yes the deadly enemy of any self respecting Mod and vice versa! It was clear to us that we were in a difficult situation. My new found friend -Fred the Carpet- turned to me and said "can you hold on to my harmonica for a while? I think I'll go for a swim" and off he ran into the sea fully clothed! All Hell broke loose. I managed to escape - don't ask me how - and, about 3 months later outside of a London pub called the Duke of York I met up with my long lost friend - you guessed it - Fred the Carpet - who said " weren't you the bloke I gave my harmonica to on Brighton beach?" to which, when I replied in the positive, continued "well, if you've started playing it you can keep it";

...and I've been playing ever since.

"Father of the blues" W. C. Handy — who had begun his career performing with minstrel troupes — complained to his aunt that black musicians made too many mistakes. "Honey," she responded, "white folks like to hear colored folks make mistakes." Handy then quipped, "in this one remark, can be hidden the source or secret of jazz." The history of jazz, for Handy, was inexorably tied to markets and audiences for black sound — markets that in the 19th century could not be separated from the history of minstrelsy and racism. Coming of age in the 1890s, Handy's generation of musicians constantly weighed how much to play to white racist expectation to win audiences. One example among many is what Handy called the "musician's strike." He orchestrated a fight among band members to attract white onlookers. When the unsuspecting white audience had gathered, the band won them over by bursting into song, and as Handy assessed, "Our hokum hooked them." From a post-Jazz Age perspective, Harlem Renaissance intellectual Alain Locke commented similarly that turn-of-the-century black music made its way "by luring its audience with comedy farce and then ambushing and conquering them with music."

The word "hokum" is believed to have descended from the English term "hokey-pokey," denoting both ridicule and the ridiculous; for more than a century "hokey-pokey" has also been used, on both sides of the Atlantic, to describe low-grade ice cream sold on the streets.
Hokum can mean flattery, insincerity, derision, deception, nonsense, cheapness, or any sort of stage gimmickry used to elicit a response from jaded audiences.
Musically, hokum conveys and deserves most if not all of these meanings. Between the years 1929 and 1937 several different Chicago-based blues/jazz ensembles made records as the Hokum Boys or the Famous Hokum Boys.
During the summer of 1929 pianist Alex Hill and guitarists Dan Roberts and Alex Robinson made records for the Paramount label under the name of the Hokum Boys.
By early autumn the group consisted of pianist Jimmy Blythe, guitarist Bob Alexander, and a banjoist named Bob Robinson who also played clarinet.
In November and December 1929 Ikey Robinson made a series of records for OKeh, first with Jimmy Blythe, then with Alex Hill.
Throughout the second half of 1929 these men collaborated with pianist Leroy Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and made a number of recordings that were issued under the name of the Famous Hokum Boys.
The Famous Hokum Boys name was adopted (or hijacked) by Big Bill Broonzy, first in 1930 and 1931, then again between 1935 and 1937 when he made records with various tough customers including Washboard Sam, Black Bob, Casey Bill Weldon, clarinetist Arnett Nelson, bass saxophonist Bill Settles, and a trumpeter named Mr. Sheiks.
The only member of the original Hokum Boys to participate in Broonzy's Hokum sessions was Bob Robinson.
Various labels have made a point of reissuing every recording known to have been made by these entertaining little bands.
While the Famous Hokum Boys has turned up as a name for various regional oldtime music and country blues groups, the most famous group utilizing the name was a loose knit aggregation of blues singers that were actually better known under their own names.
Yet Georgia Tom, Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy may have wanted the somewhat more anonymous cover of a combo name in order to release their raunchiest material, including the number "It's Tight Like That".
By the time the latter ditty was cut in the late 20's, blues or so-called "race records" was established as an area where sexy, sometimes downright nasty lyrics, were a stock in a trade.
Georgia Tom, also known under his real name of Thomas Dorsey, particularly may have wanted some kind of a cover to prevent his high profile gospel and religious singing career from being corrupted.
The ruse hardly worked, however, but the result actually turned out to be a sort of a canonization of Dorsey and the Famous Hokum Boys by later advocates of what became known as "Contemporary Christian Music", in which it was allright, even desired, for the performer to touch on steamy subjects such as lust and adultery.
"It's entirely arguable that Christian music would not exist if it were not for the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey", a magazine devoted to the contemporary Christian genre even wrote.
The term "hokum" is said to have been invented by the Famous Hokum Boys as a new descriptive term for the type of material the band was coming up with, but has since evolved into a minimally used expression for something corny, low-brow or kitschy, with little reference to sex--or gospel.

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