All the blues news from the extended San Francisco Bay Area!
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Hi again. Blues activity has picked up since the holidays, so the last three winter months have been busier. More events happened, and there was happy and sad blues news. Festival dates have been announced, and the lineup for some of them is already available on the websites. Musicians continued to entertain us, and there was the usual old and new CD releases. So let's check out what actually happened.
HARMONICA BLOWOUT OF 2004
The thirteenth annual Blues Harmonica Blowout, presented by Mark Hummel and Hohner Harmonicas, continued to be a crowd pleaser. This year there were fewer venues, but still 8 shows in 6 consecutive days. The shows aired in Modesto, four shows in two nights in Oakland at the renowned jazz place, Yoshis; Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and Chico.
This year's performers were: John Cephus and Phil Wiggins; Carey Bell; Lazy Lester; Willie "Big Eyes" Smith; and Mark Hummel & The Blues Survivors. Other musicians joined the nucleus group in some of the venues. That included Mofo, Ron Thompson, and Rick Estrin in Modesto and the fourteen-year old girl, Sweet Harp Santana, and Charlie Musselwhite in Santa Rosa. There was some incredible music, with the swamp blues of Lazy Lester and the Piedmont country-style music of Cephus and Wiggins being particular highlights. Incidently, I saw a show by Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and his own band two months later. One often thinks of him just playing the drums, since he was Muddy's drummer for seventeen years, but he actually has been also blowing harp since the fifties. His son, "Beady Eyes" now plays drums in this band. Willie put a lot of energy and emotion in his Chicago blues classics.
BLUES CLUB CELEBRATES BIRTHDAY
Biscuits and Blues, the best nightclub in San Francisco to hear the blues, had its ninth anniversary party in February. Four bands, including The Johnny Ace Band, featuring Cathy Lemon; The Blues Crusade; Ron Thompson and The Resistors, and Five O'Clock Shadow kept the celebration lively. There was also a jam session. Bobbie Webb, among others, blew his sax in this session as well as with two other groups. It was a gala evening.
EVOLUTION OF BLUES CONCERT
This concert was presented in Santa Rosa, about an hour and a half north of San Francisco, for the eleventh time. Vietnamese-born, twenty-eight year- old Lara Price, her twenty-one year-old guitarist, Laura Chavez, and band performed. Price, a blues belter, loves the blues "because it's passionate music." Price is one of the few female band leaders, who also acts as her own booking agent and manager. Sixty-year old Maria Muldaur and Mike Schermer and their bands also were featured. Muldaur gave a demonstration lecture earlier that day on "Women of The Blues: The Early Years."
AWARDS GALORE
The Bay Area Blues Society and City of Oakland did a nice job of presenting their West Coast Blues Hall of Fame and Awards Show in February. This show honored blues, jazz, and gospel artists for their contributions to the art form called blues. Ten musicians were inducted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. That included the late Bobby Forte who played sax for Bobby Blue Bland, B.B.King, and James Brown, and Wylie Trass, who has been singing in the Bay Area with various musicians for over fifty years. This year Jimmy McCracklin and Johnny Otis received the Bob Geddins Lifetime Achievement Award since they both have been very influential in the blues and R&B music worlds.
Fifteen General Category and nineteen Special Category Awards were presented. Some of the highlights in the General Category(Best of the Year) Awards were: Craig Horton, blues guitar; Sugar Pie DeSanto, blues female vocalist; Curtis Lawson, blues male vocalist; Brenda Boykin, R&B female vocalist; Jackie Payne, R&B male vocalist; and Bobbie Webb, blues saxophone. Among the Special Category (Best of the Year) Awards were John Lee Hooker, Jr., blues comeback artist; Monterey Bay Blues Festival, blues non-profit organization; and even yours truly, blues writer. I can't believe I have been writing about the blues for over twenty years!
OTHER SPECIAL EVENTS
The Oakland Museum had two blues celebrations. One was the free musical and spoken-word event which recognized Oakland's heyday as a blues mecca.The other was called "An Evening of Shipyard Blues," and was multi-faceted. It featured several showings of "Long Train Running," a graduate thesis film made in 1981. This film explores the history of blues music in Oakland, California. Two Bay Area musicians and their bands, Brenda Boykin and Jimmy McCracklin, performed separately in the restaurant. Danny Caron played solo guitar. There was also an exhibit of the influential Henry Kaiser, who was responsible for building the wartime shipyards. Blacks by the thousands from Texas and Louisiana came by the thousands to work in the Bay Area's factories and shipyards. They wanted to hear they music they knew back home and did for awhile until electricity and saxophones were added. This new mix of music became the West Coast Blues.
The Sacramento Heritage Festival, Inc. has a new series of occasional shows called "Blues Across America." Proceeds from the shows are given to a music education program in the public schools of Sacramento. Their February theme had a Texas theme. W.C. Clark, Smokin' Joe Kubek & Bnois King, Kay Kay & The Rays, Cricket Taylor, and Texas transplants, Frankie Lee and Omar Sharriff, all performed on this show. The second March show had a Southern California theme. Featured on this show were Earl Thomas & The Jezebelles, Cafe' R&B, and The Boneshakers.
BLUES HISTORY IN PORTRAIT FORM
An amazing new and colorful mural-like wall adorns the Hamilton Recreation Center at the corner of Post and Steiner in San Francisco. It is really a portrait wall since such blues and R&B greats as B.B.King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, and dozens of other world-famous celebrities and many local musicians are easily recognizable. All the featured musicians have at least two things in common. First, their music shares the same ancestral home of the rural areas of the deep South where blues were born. Second, they all played in San Francisco sometime.
All the portraits were designed and painted on the wall by one artist, Santie Huckaby, a local painter and blues percussionist. "Patterns" of the images were created in the studio from photographs and then transferred onto the wall in a similar way that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, only with acrylic paint. This has been an enormous project since the wall is more than 30 feet high and twice as wide. Bobbie Webb, local blues saxophonist and director of the Blues and R&B Music Foundation, has been assisting Huckaby. This Foundation obtained a grant for the painting from the Mayor's Neighborhood Beautification Fund about two years ago. Work began last June and is just now being finished.
The wall portrays blues in all its forms, from workers in the cotton fields improvising musical instruments to acoustic and electric musicians, vocalists, and even to contemporary rap music. The portraits are arranged to show the historical development of the blues. For example, Huckaby stated that "T-Bone Walker reinvented the guitar. Next to him is Jimi Hendrix, who took it further. Nearby is Tupac Shakur, who took the blues and incorporated it into rap." This work of art is worth checking out if you are into the blues and in the San Francisco area.
MUSICIANS IN THE NEWS
Keyboardist and guitarist, Austin deLone and his band, The Sophisticated Dudes, just returned from Europe and Japan, where they backed the legendary soul singer, Howard Tate. Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt from the Bay Area will perform this year at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which is held April 23-May 2. Blues female vocalist, E.C. Scott had a feature article in the January-February, 2004 issue #171 of "Living Blues" magazine. Chris Thomas King will portray the late Lowell Fulson in the feature Paramount film, "Unchain My Heart: The Ray Charles Story," which is about Ray's early life. Ray was in Lowell's band before he became famous. Vocalist, Sista Monica, after a bout with cancer, is surviving and thriving and has lots of energy. She has written new songs, discovered a more powerful and stronger voice, and is only playing 30 concerts this year. No clubs are included. For more information, check her website at: www.sistamonica.com .
February was a bad month for people that passed on. Alabama-born and long-time Bay Area resident, J.J. Malone, passed away on February 20 in Hawaii after a valiant fight with cancer. The seventy-year old Malone was a singer, guitarist, and piano player. His playing style combined down-home blues with modern jazz elements. He recorded for the Fantasy, Cherrie, Fedora, and Blues Express record labels. Also guitarist-vocalist, J.J."Bad Boy" Jones died on February 25 from a heart attack as he was on his way to a gig. People said he sang like B.B.King. He had one CD out. He lived in the Bay Area a long time before he moved to Los Angeles. He was in his seventies.
BAY AREA NIGHTCLUB IN JEOPARDY
The homey Sweetwater nightclub, just 30 minutes north of San Francisco in Mill Valley, is undergoing some murky negotiations about a new lease for the club and other issues. The landlords, who have owned the place for forty years, and the renters who took over the club in 1999, may not come to an agreement that is satisfactory to both parties. In that case, the present Sweetwater would close and hopefully find somewhere else for their music. Over three decades, the club has become one of the country's most respected showcases for American roots music. Even the BBC did a fantastic television special there on John Lee Hooker and Friends which aired on the A&E (Arts & Entertainment) network.
There was a two-night, six-hour show Sweetwater Legacy Celebration scheduled before all this flack occurred. It was originally planned to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the club, and featured many of the Sweetwater regulars, including Bonnie Raitt, Nick Gravenites, and Tommy Castro. As it turned out, the celebration also functioned as a rally, with all the flared tempers and strained feelings of a family feud, for the club. So many musicians showed up for the sold-out shows that the sidewalk in front of the club looked like backstage. We hope that the final results are positive for the Sweetwater.
NEW WEBSITE FOR CALIFORNIA BLUES FESTIVALS
Many blues festivals in California, from May through September, have already been listed as to date, time, venue, and often line-ups. Instead of listing each website for a particular festival, check out: www.sonomatunes.com/blues_festivals.html . This website has all the information in one place. You just click on the link of the festival you want to know more about. There are a lot of festivals to choose from.
PERFORMERS VISIT BAY AREA
We always get good entertainers visiting the area. This time that included: Marcia Ball, Corby Yates, Tinsley Ellis, Kelly Joe Phelps, Chris Whitley, Roy Gaines, Hamilton Loomis, Big Jack Johnson, Mojo Buford, Chuck Willis, Ron Thompson and the Resistors, Jackie Greene, John Hammond, Mose Allison, Lucky Peterson, Keb' Mo,' W.C. Clark, Johnny Rawls, Buddy Guy, Joe Beard, Ernest Lane, Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, Floyd Dixon, Arthur Adams, Jonny Lang, Ruby Hayes, and Vernon Garret.
MORE CDS
Blind Pig Records issued three moderately priced CDs: "Bare Blues Instrumentals," "White Line Flyers," and "If This Is Love - I'd Rather Have the Blues." Fillmore Slim's latest CD is called " Funky Mama's House," and the title track is a true story. It is on Fedora Records and can be found at www.jazzdepot.com . Charlie Musselwhite has signed with Peter Gariel's Real World Records and they have released his first album on that label. It is called "Sanctuary" and explores some of the darker roots of the blues. For details, check out www.realworldrecords.com .
Daniel Castro (no relation to Tommy) has a live double CD out entitled: "Live At The Saloon." It can be purchased via email at: castromerchandise@earthlink.net . Norwegian-born and now Santa Cruz-based Chris Anderson, singer and guitarist, has his new CD out called " Rock Awhile." Check out his website at www.kidandersen.com . The largest subscribed blues publication in the world, BluesWax, has chosen Tommy Castro's CD, "Gratitude" as their Blues Album Of The Year 2003. BluesWax is free on email at: blueswax@visnat.com . Incidently, this online Blues Wax group has recently acquired the venerable "Blues Revue" magazine.
There have been several CD rereleases of music. The Classics Record Label issued one of Jimmy McCracklin from the 1945-48 period. This label also released one of Saunders King of songs from 1942-48. The Virgin label put out "The Right Stuff" by John Lee Hooker. This music was from Modern releases of 1949-53 and included his "Boogie Chillen" debut. Speaking of Hooker, the album he was working on before he passed in 2001, called "Face To Face," was released on the Eagle Records label. It was number 8 on the "Living Blues" December, 2003 radio charts.
That is all for now. Get out and enjoy those blues!
Maria Bainer © March, 2004
