She’s been called “Charlotte’s reigning queen of the blues” and “one of those rare singers who make people understand just how powerful a tool the human voice can be.” Robin Rogers won the Charlotte Blues Society Talent Competition in 2003 and competed in the 2004 International Blues Challenge in Memphis where she and her band finished in the top 10 in a field of 98 bands. Her albums include 2001’s “Time for Myself” and 2004’s “Crazy, Cryin’ Blues.” It’s a great success story, and it comes for an artist who has definitely paid her dues. While many of America’s young people were rediscovering the blues in the late 1960s, Rogers was living the blues. As a runaway teen trying to escape a troubled home, she bounced from Richmond, Virginia, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Atlanta, Georgia, to Coconut Grove, Florida. She sometimes slept in parks or abandoned cars, and she served time in a juvenile reform school before being released at age 15. It was a hard life, and Rogers eventually became addicted to drugs and alcohol. But it was her addiction to singing that changed her life. She learned to play guitar and started accompanying herself on the streets, in coffee houses, anywhere she might pick up a few tips. After hearing the applause of strangers, she was hooked. She was determined to make music a full-time career. Rogers moved to Florida in 1979 and began performing in the Miami area. But it wasn’t until 10 years later, when she finally became drug and alcohol free and moved to North Carolina, that things really began to turn around. She became involved with the Charlotte Blues Society in the mid-1990s, and shortly after that, she met and married a fellow musician and blues player, Tony Rogers. They performed as an acoustic duo with Tony on guitar and dobro and Robin on harmonica and percussion. When a local producer named Jim Brock heard Robin sing, he jumped at the chance to help her make a CD, which became “Time For Myself,” a contemporary blues record with six original tracks. Robin and Tony put a band together to support the debut CD, and that combo went on to win the 2003 Charlotte Blues Challenge and compete in Memphis in 2004. Their second release, “Crazy, Cryin’ Blues,” was released in 2004 and won the award for Best Self-Produced CD at the 2005 International Blues Challenge. Robin Rogers had truly arrived. “I’m in a great place,” she said in a recent interview. “I’m a natural at singing the blues because I’ve lived the blues, been all the way to the bottom, crawled out of that hole and through God’s grace, was given a second chance to do something I love so much and feel passionate about … singing!”