Ted Horowitz (born March 31, 1960 in the Bronx, New York City), better known by his stage name Popa Chubby (a play on the slang idiom "pop a chubby", meaning to get an erection), is an American electric blues singer and guitarist.
Born the son of a candy store owner, at age thirteen Chubby began playing drums; shortly thereafter, he discovered the music of the Rolling Stones and began playing guitar. Although he grew up in the 1970s, Chubby took his cue from artists of the 1960s, including Jimi Hendrix and Cream, among others. By the time he was in his early twenties, he enjoyed and played blues music, but also worked for a while backing punk rock poet Richard Hell. Chubby's first big break was winning a national blues talent search sponsored by KLON, a public radio station in Long Beach, California. He won the New Artist of the Year award and opened at the Long Beach Blues Festival in 1992.
Chubby has continued to play more than 200 club dates a year through the 1990s. His Sony/Okeh debut, Booty and the Beast, was produced by longtime Atlantic Records engineer/producer Tom Dowd, whose recordings of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, and others are legendary.
In 1994, Chubby released several albums on his own Laughing Bear label, It's Chubby Time and Gas Money, before landing his deal with Sony Music/Okeh Records for Booty and the Beast, his major-label debut, released in 1995. In 1996, the 1 (800) PrimeCD label released a live recording of Chubby's, Hit the High Hard One. Two years later, One Million Broken Guitars was released on Lightyear Records; Brooklyn Basement Blues followed in 1999.
In 2000, Chubby signed with the Blind Pig label and released How'd a White Boy Get the Blues? in 2001. The disc turned out to be a slight departure, incorporating elements of contemporary pop and hip-hop. 2002's The Good, the Bad and the Chubby showed great development in the artist's songwriting and included the 9/11 commentary "Somebody Let the Devil Out." Blind Pig released a collection of early Chubby recordings, The Hungry Years, in 2003. Troubled by the war in Iraq, Chubby released his most political album, Peace, Love and Respect, a year later.
Two albums previously available only in France -- Live at FIP and Wild -- were compiled by the Blind Pig label and released as Big Man Big Guitar in 2005, followed by a new studio album called Stealing the Devil's Guitar a year later. Currently Popa Chubby is touring and awaiting the release of "The Fight Is On" his first studio record in 2 years. It will be released in February by the Provogue Label in Europe and Blind Pig records in North America. A world tour will follow.
In 2008 Popa Chubby and his life partner Galea recorded the breakthrough Country Punk CD Vicious Country released on the Dixiefrog label. He has been touring extensively with A.J. Pappas on bass and Tom Papdatos on drums. Vicious Country was chosen as Record Of The =Week for French TV's Canal Plus . In late 2008 Popa Chubby began work on a new project. A record of hard Blues Rock entitled "The Fight Is On". This record is due for release in February 2010 on the Provogue Label
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