Born into a musical family, Ty was made aware of the importance of music from an early age by his mother who sang songs to him and by his father who played the great singing voices of Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley on their mono record player nurturing their son's interest in music via the oral tradition.
At his first school at 5 years of age, Ty learned about hymn singing and folk song. For his 10th birthday, Ty's mother bought him a radio-cassette player so he could record music programs from the radio. It was this experience that exposed Ty to the sounds of guitar-orientated music of every style imaginable. When he was 16 years of age, Ty decided to learn to play the electric guitar after being inspired by a BB King concert.
A school friend introduced Ty to the music of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, BB King and Peter Green, which was to have a profound and lasting influence upon him. By his late teenage years, Ty decided to travel rather than stay in the depressed coal-mining town of Mansfield.
Ty served his performance apprenticeship as a busker working the streets of London, Paris and Amsterdam playing folk, ragtime and blues styles of music. On his return, he worked relentlessly with many line-ups that helped establish him as one of the young band leading talents on the British rhythm and blues scene.
On the advice of the guitar player, John McLaughlin, Ty decided to focus his efforts on the European continent where he has spent many years winning the hearts of blues and jazz aficionados in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Slovakia and Ireland with his impassioned quartet, trio, duo and solo performances.
Ty's success has been to fuse together different musical styles such as blues and jazz to create a distinct and instantly recognisable sound that marks him off from any other artist on the blues and jazz circuit today.
Ty's "guitar based blues roots" derive from the early solo acoustic recordings of Delta blues singers such as Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy and Jesse Fuller together with the electrified Chicagoan combos of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Otis Rush. Ty's "jazz edge" comes from the Texan guitar genius T-Bone Walker and the Memphis guitar legend BB King. Influenced by a synthesis of blues and jazz styles, Ty draws upon the 1960s "psychedelic" generation of blues men from both sides of the Atlantic: American guitarists, Mike Bloomfield, Carlos Santana, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix and the British blues boom super group, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac:
"Ty's contemporary approach to playing the blues is as fresh as it is unique!" - Peter Green
