Cover photo © 2026 Marilyn Stringer

There are many unsung heroes in the history of blues music, like Hubert Sumlin, Bob Stroger, John Primer, Buddy Guy, and Pinetop Perkins, who managed to eventually reach elevated standing in the blues community on an international scale. Many simply keep making beautiful music for those willing to listen, their passion for the music providing the drive to continue on despite limited financial reward and recognition.

No doubt that the fire still burns brightly for Big Joe Maher. In addition to being a fine drummer, Maher has written plenty of memorable songs, which he sings with authority, and has been leading his band, the Dynaflows, through a number of line-ups over nearly four decades. His discography lists eight releases for labels including Tramp, Black Top, and Severn Records in addition to recordings for Ann Rabson, Bob Margolin, and Mark Wenner of the Nighthawks, and was fortunate to be able to play with legends like Bullmoose Jackson, Otis Rush, and Jimmy Witherspoon. Yet his efforts have never quite captured the attention that his body of work seemingly warrants.

Born in 1953 in Washington, DC at Capital Hospital, Maher grew up there. His dad was was very influential in his upbringing. “I mean, if it wasn’t for my father, there might not have been a Big Joe Mayer to be quite honest. I was his son, so that was a major factor. But musically, my dad would play a little bit of everything for me. It went from Floyd Dixon to B.B. King, to Albert King and Little Milton. But I think the one that really caused me to be me was hearing Louis Jordan.

“That was the music that my dad played, especially that one Jordan album that he brought home, Somebody Up There Digs Me, which was produced by a very young Quincy Jones. That is the one that got me going, with “Caledonia” featuring Mickey Baker on guitar. I loved this stuff. That’s how the ball got rolling.”

In his early teenage years, his father was feeling some tension in the Washington area, so the family moved to Bowie, Maryland. It was a fortuitous move for the young music fan.

“I ended up going to Bowie High School, and I met this Colonel Joseph Carley, who was starting this thing called the Bowie Star Liners. I got involved with that band and my dad was like, wow, do you realize who the guys are that he’s bringing in to play with the band? I didn’t realize who the heck I was playing with until I got older. It was cats like trumpeter Clark Terry, guitarist Mundell Lowe, and trombonist Urbie Green, and others. Those guys are all fabulous jazz musicians, very well known. And I got to play with them in this band.

“In fact, we went to Mobile, Alabama and won the jazz festival as a high school band against college bands. That’s how good we were. When I was 16 years old, I started hitchhiking back into Washington to go into places where I really shouldn’t have been going, to sit outside and listen to some of these people that were performing, all black groups in a black part of town. I’m a white boy hanging out, but I wanted an education. It ended up being a who’s who of Blues over my career. I’m actually trying to write an audio book about it because it’s very interesting.”

After hearing some Benny Goodman records his father played, Maher got excited enough to start learning to play the clarinet. When the dreaded teenage hormones started to kick in, his thinking went in a different direction.

“You know, your interest in girls starts to happened around 12 or 13 years old. And I thought, who in the world is ever going to be interested in a guy who plays clarinet in this era of rock-n-roll? At the time, around 1968, the other person who was very big that I listened to a lot was James Brown.

“I liked the grooves, and of course the lyrics. One day, I had really been messing around with drums and got to learn this song called, “I Can’t Stand It,” by James Brown. This bass player knew it, and just me and him were at school playing that groove. All these girls started dancing and I went, you know what? I’m a drummer. It was simple at that point. I said, man, I’ll be able to meet some women if I play drums.

“The other thing that was interesting about that period was I started playing congas, got into some stuff with Latin grooves. When I went to the Star Liners, I was playing both congas drums and bongos, doing a little bit of everything. I’ll never forget, Clark Terry said to me one time, “I like that groove. Don’t ever lose it.” I mean, if Clark Terry tells you that, then you know you got something going on.

“I’d be playing the blues records all the time. One of the biggest ones was ‘Baby, Scratch My Back” by Slim Harpo. I used to play that record until it wore out. So I was playing drums in a band, knew some of the tunes, and the singer got sick on a gig that we were playing at the school, so they asked me to sing some of the songs. At the end of the gig, they said, well, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. I said, I’ll work on it, and kept trying to follow through on listening to really soulful music, including blues. That’s what got me headed in the direction of getting better as a vocalist.

“Some of my favorites were artists like Percy Mayfield, Floyd Dixon and Jimmy McCracklin. I played with some of those guys, learning so much about not just singing, but actually talking and singing, which was a big thing for me. When you listen to Jimmy, Floyd and Percy, they incorporate both. It’s interesting, very cool and different. Percy was considered the poet of the blues, which I think was a good analogy.

“The other one who is famous for that is Eddie “Clean Head” Vinson. Louis Jordan is maybe the greatest at storytelling and singing and talking and singing, which I think has been kind of left in the dust because now everybody wants to scream and yell, which is fine. I get it. But that talking and singing genre is one that got me real big.”

The first band that Maher played with was backing Cathy Ponton King, a singer and guitar player from the D.C. Area. They once opened for Willie Dixon. He also did a stint with the Uptown Rhythm Kings, featuring the vocals of Eric Sheridan backed by a three piece horn section. Later he began to work with Tom Principato, another area guitarist of some renown.

“We were doing all the stuff that I really liked and grew up listening to. Tom had his own label, Powerhouse Records, and offered to release my album on the label, and play guitar. So that’s when my first album, Good Rockin’ Daddy, was recorded and done, in 1989. There was no band at that point. I did the recording mostly of covers, songs I liked with the exception of “Good Rockin’ Daddy” and “No Good Woman Blues”. Those are songs that I wrote as I was just getting in the groove of writing in 1987.

“Eventually, I decided to do my own thing. The first band I put together had Jeff Sarli on bass, a really great bass player from Annapolis, Maryland, who ended up later playing with the Rolling Stones on the Bridges to Babylon album. The first guitar player was this guy who kind of stepped back and hadn’t worked for a long time, and his name was Bill Kirchen. Bill played with Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. He’s a great guitarist.

“But one day, he goes, “This is not my thing. I’m not a blues guy.” And I said, you’re a great player, but I understand. So then I started to formulate a thing where I got Rusty Bogart on guitar and Kevin McKendree on keyboards along Jeff Sarli. Then I met Joe Stanley, who was a great tenor sax player, a fixture on the D.C. Scene. That was the start of Big Joe and the Dynaflows.

“Then Jeff got other things going on and Rusty moved away, so then I put a new band together with Ivan Appelrouth on guitar, John Shepphard on bass and John Fralin on keyboards. We went overseas, recorded a album over there called Cool Dynaflow, I think it was in Amsterdam. That group stayed together for a while. We did a lot of touring, traveled up and down the East coast. Bob Margolin was a great friend of mine. When he would need a drummer, he’d call me.

“Right now, the Dynaflows include Zach Lees. Have you ever heard this big dude play guitar? You’d be like, whoa! Zach is a great player and a wonderful cat who just happens to be really into Blues deeply. He gets it. And then there’s a bass player named Randall Ball from West Virginia, who’s a great upright player.

“The late Bobby Parker was one of my best friends. Bobby was great as a singer and guitar player, and he wrote the song, “Watch Your Step.” He would ask me to do gigs with him and I’d say, man, I can’t work for that deal, bro. I love you, man, but I need to make some money. I used to tell Bobby that he needed a better band. You get what you pay for.”

In the mid-1990 decade, around the time his son was born, Maher was hired to be the musical director for Fleetwood’s, once a thriving venue in Alexandria, VA, owned by fellow drummer Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac fame.

“I had played there and met Mick. He loved my drumming. He’s a very down to earth guy. At some point he fired the guy who was in charge of booking music because he wasn’t doing that well, asking me to take over. I did that for like a year and a half. We booked some fine shows with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Wolfman Jack, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and a sold-out big show with Johnnie Johnson, who was Chuck Berry’s piano player.

“They were robbing him. The guys who were the managers were stealing money and every damn thing. About the time my son was going to be born, Mick said, if you want this club, I’ll make you the head manager. I said, I can’t do that. brother. First of all, it requires more business sense than I have. And the next thing I know, the whole thing just folded. I haven’t been in touch with him since. He’s in Hawaii now.”

“Here’s another funny story. I used to play this hotel with Bill Heid, a fine keyboard player. We were doing a little jazzy thing. I see this group of hippies come in and one girl was gorgeous. This short guy with long hair, he tapped me on the shirt, will you please talk to me? It was Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. He was just amazed at me. He goes, man, I’ve never seen anything. Your drumming is incredible. Then you started singing and I just freaked out. That was a fun conversation. Anyways, the girl that was sitting there was his daughter, Liv Tyler, beautiful girl.”

Around 2001, the drummer made some connections with a Texas roadhouse legend, Delbert McClinton.

“I knew him and met him a couple times. But when I had my accident, he came as well as my best friend from New Orleans, Earl King. Both of them came and played my benefit when I broke my back. And that’s where I got really tight with Delbert. I went on his Sandy Beaches cruise in 2002 because he invited me. Those guys played my benefit, flew up, paid their way. I mean, Delbert was on the road. He had the whole band come. They played my benefit and, of course, raised a bunch of money for me.

“His guitar player, Bob Britt, called me in 2018 and said, Delbert’s already won two Grammy awards. But he thinks if he has you on this new record, that he will have a chance to win another one. I said, really? Me? He goes, yes, that is what he thinks. Well, the rest is history. We won a Grammy for Delbert’s Tall, Dark, & Handsome album in 2020 for Best Traditional Blues Album.

“So we won the Grammy and then Delbert retired. He called it a day. I don’t blame him,. When you’re 80 years old, it’s time to just lay back and chill. My relationship with him has been wonderful. That cruise is something else. There’s so much music on the ship. I tell people, if you like music and you go on this cruise, there’s going to be something you’re will like, trust me.”

Maher had been in North Carolina to be part of a recording of music aimed at the “shag” dancing scene popular in the area. It paid, and he needed the work. One day it rained hard, and as the drummer was walking down the steps at the Day’s Inn, he slipped and fell. Little did he know that it would be a decade before he would resume his recording career.

“That’s a crazy ass story. The first two paramedics that came to get me with the ambulance were about five foot two and weighed about 95 pounds each. They looked at me and knew that wasn’t going to work. I was cussing bad. So they bring this guy who’s like a six foot six weightlifter, weighs about 350 pounds.

“He says, we can’t get you on a stretcher. I’m going to carry you down. I thought, oh God, no! Oh God, no. He picked me up like an angel and took me down the steps and took me to the hospital. The long story short, the doctor said, I have good news and bad news. Good news is you have a condition called ankylosing spondylitis, an chronic autoimmune disease. Your life was saved because rather than snapping your spinal cord, you cracked your spine.

“Bad news is you need to go in a full body cast for nine or 10 months, or have a back fusion. If you do the cast, it’s your full body cast. I said, well, that I can’t do that. That’s out. Seven doctors turned me down for the surgery before I finally found Dr. Leonard Nelson. He put me back together. After about two days, man, I was walking around with one of those walker things. Now, 25 years later, I’m still going, still playing.

“My nine lives are wearing out though. I was down in Tampa a couple years ago and had another issue that was horrible. I got really sick and I fell out of my chair. My son was there, got me in the hospital. At first they thought I had pneumonia. Then they said, no, your gallbladder’s bad, but it’s easy to take out. They went to take it out and the damn thing exploded. I got sepsis. That can kill you in about eight or 10 hours. But four doctors worked on me and I’m still here.

“You know, one day you got $3 and the next day you got $3,000. One day you got a girlfriend. The next day you don’t, one day you feel great. The next day you feel terrible. One day you own a house. I win the Grammy and a month later there’s COVID, no gigs, no nothing. It’s life. I think country and blues music really capture that the most, not that other songs don’t. But those two to me really hit home.

“My song, “Property Line,” was about my neighbor, who was a jerk, so I wrote a song talking about him. When you hear me do it, you hear Percy Mayfield coming out of me. If you close your eyes, you could easily hear Percy singing that song, and his own reflection of what I’m saying. It’s daily life. Hey everybody, let’s have some fun. Blues and country in particular seemed to portray life in a clearer fashion for me.

“At a gig one night, a guy sat in with the band, and all he did was sing one verses over and over. I heard that verse and went, I’ve kind of lived that story. Not totally, but I’m going to finish it. That become the title track for my Layin’ In The Alley record. Another time a woman calls me and says her boyfriend cheated on her. I wrote “Sometimes Love Is Like That.”

“I’ll sit down by myself, write a verse, and then I don’t do anything. I sit on it, and then another verse will come to me. It’s more difficult to write as a drummer than a person who plays an instrument like guitar or piano, something where you can accompany yourself as you’re writing, because then you can hear more. I have to kind of hum it in my head until I get what I’m thinking I want chord wise and groove wise.”

As he reflects back, Maher is thankful that his career intersected with a time when many of the artists that influenced him still walked the earth. His recorded body of work holds up over repeated listens, full of swinging tunes delivered with his impeccable drumming and understated vocal renderings.

“Tomorrow’s never promised. I’m thinking about writing that tune. I’m still doing what I do, thank God. I’m not over the hill but I’m 72 years old. My drive has kind of weakened to get out there and be constantly hustling for stuff. There are guys out there working like Mark Hummel. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s constantly working. But I don’t see that out of a lot of musicians.

“If you play guitar and sing, you got it. Doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, you got it. Whether you’re a girl, a man, black, white, yellow, pink, purple. You’re good no matter what because you play that instrument. I wish people could have a more open ear to understand people like me, someone who grew up very heavy rooted in blues, jazz, and country, and can bring it across. Someone who doesn’t just turn the guitar up to “11” and sing loud. There’s more to it than just that.

“I just had so many unbelievable opportunities to be around some of these musicians who are hallmarks of blues and jazz. It’s something that I’m so proud of. You just have to take it as it is, for what it is, as you might not ever get that chance. That made a huge difference in me as a musician and a singer. Am I great? No, I don’t think I’m great, but I’m pretty good. I’ve covered a lot of ground from here to Chicago to New Orleans, and to the West Coast, so it’s been quite a ride.”

Blues Blast Magazine Senior writer Mark Thompson lives in Florida, where he is enjoying the sun and retirement. He is the past President of the Board of Directors for the Suncoast Blues Society and a former member of the Board of Directors for the Blues Foundation. Music has been a huge part of his life for the past fifty years – just ask his wife!