ROCKLAND — The North Atlantic Blues Festival has become one of the premiere stages for blues royalty since it first rolled out the red carpet 19 years ago.

Legends, rising stars and tens of thousands of adoring fans each year have graced Harbor Park with its picturesque Down East backdrop.

This year’s festival features a memorial tribute to “Queen of Blues” Koko Taylor, with the reunion of her Blues Machine Band. Taylor’s daughter, Joyce “Cookie” Threatt, hinted there might be a surprise as well.

The two-day festival lined with the crowned jewels of the blues begins Saturday, July 14; continues through the night with the local pub crawl offering regional blues acts in 19 venues; and ends Sunday, July 15. 

Co-founders Paul Benjamin and Jamie Isaacson launched the NABF in 1994 with a successful but modest start. But when Taylor took the stage in 1995 and then returned in 1998, the rest of the blues realm took note.

Taylor died in 2009 after performing for 50 years, being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and winning more Blues Music Awards (formerly W.C. Handy Awards) than any other artist.

Benjamin and Isaacson knew they had to honor Taylor’s legacy. Putting the band back together was the first step, Isaacson said.

“It’s a way of keeping Koko Taylor’s legacy going and to give her band a nice pay day as well,” Benjamin said. “We wanted to do it last year, but not all of the band members were ready or healthy enough yet.”

Guitarists Calvin Louden and Shunsuke Kikuta, bassist Ricky Nelson, drummer Brian Parker and keyboardist Stanley Banks suffered serious injuries in a van accident while touring and en route to meet Taylor for a show in 2008.

Benjamin contacted Taylor’s daughter, who reunited the players and added female vocalists Melvia “Chick” Rogers, Nora Jean Wallace and Jackie Scott.

“This tribute is basically a remembrance of her life,” Threatt said from her Chicago home during a recent telephone interview. “She opened so many doors for so many women, just as some of the greats like Bessie Smith did a generation before her.”

The band performed with the vocalists for the first time last month at the Chicago Blues Festival.

“I was there with Cookie, and it was amazing,” Benjamin said. “The feeling of love and admiration for each other — everyone hugging each other — it was a great feeling to be part of that, and I know it will continue. I think Cookie might actually sing in Rockland. I’ve never heard her sing. I didn’t even know she could sing.”

Threatt said she did not make any demands on the band, which shared a special relationship with her mother, except to play her mother’s music and to stay true to her memory.

“I let them do whatever was comfortable to them,” Threatt  said. “I just was desiring to educate people about the great women who paved the way. When my mother started, it was pretty much a man’s thing. Even now, if you’re not picking up an ax, which is what my mother called a guitar, then you really didn’t fit in. She has planted many seeds among so many talented women who weren’t even thinking about the blues before.”

And now, Threatt is feeling as though she wants to take one more step by singing one of her mother’s favorite songs, even though she’s never sung anywhere besides church.

“That surprise may be me,” Threatt said with an embarrassed giggle. “I have decided to do something in memory of my mom. But I’m not making any promises.”

Threatt herself passed on the crown her mother received in 1972 as “Queen of the Blues” to young recording artist Shemekia Copeland, who has performed at the NABF several times.

“Shemekia was my mother’s blues baby,” said Threatt, who is Taylor’s only child. “That’s my little sister. She is definitely making a name for herself and paving the way for this new generation.”

Threatt described her mother, who worked as a domestic before taking to the road as a singer, as a loving and strong mother.

“At home, she was just Mama. She was Cora Taylor, not Koko,” Threatt said. “She taught me to make a bed and fluff a pillow, that it was OK to scrub toilets and to hang your clothes up after yourself. My father was wonderful because he knew how to flip the hat and be both parents when she was on the road. I was loved and have been truly blessed. It is because of the blues that I got educated, I lived, I slept and I ate. And I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love by her fans.”

Go and do

WHAT: 19th North Atlantic Blues Festival

WHEN: Saturday, July 14; music starts at 11 a.m.

WHERE: Harbor Park in Rockland

WHO: Randy Oxford Band, Albert Castiglia, Royal Southern Brotherhood (Cyril Neville, Mike Zito, Devon Allman, Charlie Wooten and Mean Willie Green), Rick Estrin & the Nightcats tribute to Koko Taylor (The Blues Machine, Nora Jean Wallace, Melvia “Chick” Rogers and Jackie Scott) and Tab Benoit

WHEN: Sunday, July 15; music starts at 11 a.m.

WHO: Charlie A’Court, Anthony Gomes, Ana Popovic, John Mayall, Chubby Carrier & the Bayou Swamp Band

Advanced tickets: $25 per day/$50 for weekend; sales end Monday, July 9. Tickets at the gate: $35/$70.

MORE INFO: www.northatlanticbluesfestival.com