Post by tcb on Aug 2, 2003 12:10:14 GMT -5
Lack of `savior' has fans blue
Folk/Blues/by Daniel Gewertz
Friday, August 1, 2003
In this ``Year of the Blues,'' blues music is a genre far more talked about than listened to live.
There are festivals, such as the Mohegan Sun-Framingham Bluesfest on Aug. 16, where the majority of acts are not blues artists. Blues no longer dominates the programming of any local club, including the House of Blues. And the local blues-band gestalt can seem more John Belushi than John Lee Hooker.
For an artist, walking the narrow blues line is a feat. Re-create the past too closely and you become a preservationist. Change or commercialize the tradition too flagrantly and you end up with music no self-respecting buff would recognize as blues. Once called a savior of traditional, acoustic blues, Keb' Mo' played with a band at the FleetBoston Pavilion last month and sounded terribly close to middle-of-the-road pop.
Can any act today become famous and keep blues paramount in its sound? Or, in other words, can any musician follow the great template set down more than a generation ago by Taj Mahal?
Mahal, 63, plays Scullers in Boston on Thursday. Though he has experimented a bit in the past 35 years, and has long displayed strong streaks of ragtime and reggae, Mahal has kept remarkably true to classic folk blues. Like his old mate Ry Cooder, Mahal's knowledge is enormous. Unlike some of his 1960s peers, he didn't just emulate the blues, he ingested it. Last time he was in town, Mahal revisited some of his oldest blues repertoire. His voice was scratchy and wrinkled, but the spirit was ageless.
Robert Cray, who splits a bill with John Hiatt at Cohasset's South Shore Music Circus on Sunday night, was called a blues savior when he broke into the Top 40 in 1987 with his ``Strong Persuader'' album and the song ``Smoking Gun.'' A soul/blues/pop crossover artist from the start, Cray had solidified his blues credentials the previous year with ``Showdown!,'' the Grammy-winning album he made with his boyhood hero, guitar great Albert Collins, and Johnny Copeland. Many blues fans have called Cray a sellout for his pop crossover work, but the singer-guitarist, who turns 50 today, never pretended to be a straight-ahead blues artist.
``The people who gave me the tag `blues savior' were not listening to exactly what we were doing,'' Cray said this week.
``I have always had a lot of influences. I first got a guitar because of the Beatles,'' said the former Army brat, who was born in Georgia but grew up all over Europe. ``Then I saw Albert Collins blow everybody away at an outdoor festival in 1969. At age 16 I got involved with the blues mystique: the nicknames, stories, double-entendres. Albert Collins played our high school graduation party in Takoma, Wash.''
Cray's new CD, a supple effort called ``Time Will Tell,'' is among his most diverse, with two anti-war songs, an eastern-tinged instrument called a bluesitar, a string quartet and very little that might be labeled blues. Pianist Jim Pugh co-produced and offers several songs.
In 1987, like today, a lot of music fans and media types had a strong desire for blues to return to the mainstream of American culture. Labeling a crossover artist such as Cray a blues savior revealed a certain desperation.
``Tags in music do artists a disservice. But if me being tagged a blues artist allows more people to listen to other blues players, then it's a positive. I admit, though, some blues artists don't talk to me at all,'' Cray said with a small chuckle.
Folk/Blues/by Daniel Gewertz
Friday, August 1, 2003
In this ``Year of the Blues,'' blues music is a genre far more talked about than listened to live.
There are festivals, such as the Mohegan Sun-Framingham Bluesfest on Aug. 16, where the majority of acts are not blues artists. Blues no longer dominates the programming of any local club, including the House of Blues. And the local blues-band gestalt can seem more John Belushi than John Lee Hooker.
For an artist, walking the narrow blues line is a feat. Re-create the past too closely and you become a preservationist. Change or commercialize the tradition too flagrantly and you end up with music no self-respecting buff would recognize as blues. Once called a savior of traditional, acoustic blues, Keb' Mo' played with a band at the FleetBoston Pavilion last month and sounded terribly close to middle-of-the-road pop.
Can any act today become famous and keep blues paramount in its sound? Or, in other words, can any musician follow the great template set down more than a generation ago by Taj Mahal?
Mahal, 63, plays Scullers in Boston on Thursday. Though he has experimented a bit in the past 35 years, and has long displayed strong streaks of ragtime and reggae, Mahal has kept remarkably true to classic folk blues. Like his old mate Ry Cooder, Mahal's knowledge is enormous. Unlike some of his 1960s peers, he didn't just emulate the blues, he ingested it. Last time he was in town, Mahal revisited some of his oldest blues repertoire. His voice was scratchy and wrinkled, but the spirit was ageless.
Robert Cray, who splits a bill with John Hiatt at Cohasset's South Shore Music Circus on Sunday night, was called a blues savior when he broke into the Top 40 in 1987 with his ``Strong Persuader'' album and the song ``Smoking Gun.'' A soul/blues/pop crossover artist from the start, Cray had solidified his blues credentials the previous year with ``Showdown!,'' the Grammy-winning album he made with his boyhood hero, guitar great Albert Collins, and Johnny Copeland. Many blues fans have called Cray a sellout for his pop crossover work, but the singer-guitarist, who turns 50 today, never pretended to be a straight-ahead blues artist.
``The people who gave me the tag `blues savior' were not listening to exactly what we were doing,'' Cray said this week.
``I have always had a lot of influences. I first got a guitar because of the Beatles,'' said the former Army brat, who was born in Georgia but grew up all over Europe. ``Then I saw Albert Collins blow everybody away at an outdoor festival in 1969. At age 16 I got involved with the blues mystique: the nicknames, stories, double-entendres. Albert Collins played our high school graduation party in Takoma, Wash.''
Cray's new CD, a supple effort called ``Time Will Tell,'' is among his most diverse, with two anti-war songs, an eastern-tinged instrument called a bluesitar, a string quartet and very little that might be labeled blues. Pianist Jim Pugh co-produced and offers several songs.
In 1987, like today, a lot of music fans and media types had a strong desire for blues to return to the mainstream of American culture. Labeling a crossover artist such as Cray a blues savior revealed a certain desperation.
``Tags in music do artists a disservice. But if me being tagged a blues artist allows more people to listen to other blues players, then it's a positive. I admit, though, some blues artists don't talk to me at all,'' Cray said with a small chuckle.