A Blues Belter Bounces Back From Adversity : Pop music: Koko Taylor was injured in a van accident and then suffered the death of her husband-manager.

Koko Taylor got a refresher course in the blues two years ago.

The Chicago-based blues belter, who shares a bill with Johnny Winter at the Palace Thursday and headlines the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach on Sunday, was on a roll through most of the ‘80s. She won a 1984 Grammy for appearing on the live “Blues Explosion” compilation album, racked up a half-dozen other Grammy nominations and took home numerous W. C. Handy Awards, the blues community’s equivalent to the Grammys.

But in 1988, on one of her 200 nights a year on the road, her tour van was involved in an accident that nearly killed two of her band members and left Taylor with a fractured shoulder, collarbone and ribs. The injuries forced Taylor to take six months off. Then, six months after resuming her career, she suffered another personal loss: the death of her husband and manager, Robert (Pops) Taylor.

But Taylor, 55, has bounced back.

Her new Alligator album “Jump for Joy” has been earning rave critical notices and Taylor is back to her customary touring schedule of nine months on the road.

“When the accident happened, I did not think about retiring,” Taylor said recently by phone from her Atlanta hotel. “I thought about how I might not be able (to come back), but as soon as I got able, I was ready to get right back into it.

“My work was the best thing happening for me--it gave me something to go on. I just stay on the road--that’s my life and if I stay home too long, I get bored.”

Born in Memphis, Tenn., Taylor started singing gospel music and absorbed blues through local radio programs hosted by blues/R&B; luminaries B. B. King and Rufus Thomas in the late ‘40s. But thoughts of a musical career were far from her mind when she moved to Chicago in 1953.

“I used to go to different clubs every weekend, my husband and I, and sit in with people like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and Buddy Guy,” Taylor said. “They got to know me and it got to where they would invite me up on the bandstand to do a tune.”

Taylor’s avocation began turning into a career when the audience one night included Willie Dixon, who took her under his wing and supervised her earliest recordings. Most importantly, he persuaded her to record his song “Wang Dang Doodle,” the party-down blues anthem that launched her career in 1966 and became the final Top 10 R&B; chart hit by a Chess Records blues artist.

Taylor recorded two albums for Chess before forming her own band, the Blues Machine, in 1972. With the late-’60s blues-rock boom waning, it wasn’t the best of times to launch a career as a bandleader, but Taylor survived by hard touring and building up a grass-roots following in small blues clubs.

After appearing on two live blues compilation albums, Taylor released her first album for Alligator in 1975. She has since recorded five albums, including “Jump For Joy,” for the Chicago-based blues label. Currently, she has a brief appearance as a nightclub singer in the David Lynch film “Wild at Heart.”

Taylor has weathered a tough stretch, but don’t expect her to abandon the blues highway.

“I’ve had some rough times, good times and bad times,” she reflected. “Out here on the road singing the blues has not always been a bed of roses. Sleeping in different hotels every night, riding up and down the road a thousand miles at a time, eating out of restaurants--you really have to love what you’re doing in order to hang in there.”