Blues is dead. Nowhere is this more obvious than --ironically-- the Chicago Blues Festival on Tour, a hodge-podge of random musicians gathered together and plopped on a plane. And it shows. Loose and uncontrolled, at one point during a BB King song they seemed to be a half measure off from each other. If BB King was in the audience, he might have died this night. The town of Chicago is synonymous with the Blues. The city gave us greats like Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and Chuck Berry. The Chicago Blues Festival is the high mass of Blues. It is the world's largest blues gathering filling six stages, over four days, with dozens of musicians. It is Chicago's fourth largest festival drawing 750,000 attendees annually. Surely with this much raw talent it would be fairly easy to put together a good tour. The tour band consists of a gentleman named Taildragger, although we somehow ended up calling him Ragweed, which seemed more fitting. Eddie Taylor Jr, the rhythm guitarist knits his brow and mechanically churns out three cords over and over again all night long. Martin Lang, is a good harmonicaist but has the stage presence of a studio musician, head down as if afraid to look up. Willie Hayes, the drummer, looks like someone who is trying to look like a blues drummer from the 40s, gold chains and a neck tie matched with a fedora hat and a broad smile. Did I see a gold tooth too? Russell Jackson, is a big business MC/bassist of the night who kept introducing everyone --and I mean everyone-- as "From the West Side of Chicago..." Lastly, Lurrie Bell plays lead guitar. Blues is dead and this group dragged the corpse on stage and attached ropes to the hands and legs. Like a puppeteer, they hoisted him from the ceiling beams trying to make us think it was still alive. They had the look, they had the personality, they had the chords, but there was no feeling. Thank God for lead guitarist Lurrie Bell. He alone performed CPR all night to keep the blood flowing. Why Lurrie Bell isn't the headliner of this show is beyond me. With the unfortunate likeness to the The Simpson's character Marvin Monroe, Lurrie Bell will probably end up in the Blues Hall of Fame. With expressive eyes that pop in sync with his rifts and puffy cheeks that look like he is about to belt out a high C on an invisible trumpet, Lurrie Bell carried us away on multiple five minute guitar solos that stole our breaths. The actual headliner of the show was the 67 year old singer Taildragger. Born James Yancy Jones, he picked up his moniker from Howling Wolf due to his incessant tardiness to gigs. Howling Wolf is like a high priest of Blues. To get a nickname from him, even an deprecating one, is money in the bank and James Yancy Jones has marketed himself well. Long on character and short on singing ability he screeches out indecipherable lyrics like a German death metal band. I don't think I understood more than three words all night. Howling Wolf has a song where he uses the words traildragger to describe a theft in the night covering his tracks. Howling Wolf's true intentions behind the nickname he gave to James is probably lost to history but James' criminal record is not. In 1993 he shot fellow bluesman Boston Blackie dead over a dispute concerning receipts after a show. The murder of his business partner has dampened James' career, which might explain why he didn't actually perform in the Chicago Blues Festival in 2007. In fact, the only person in the "Chicago Blues Festival on Tour" band that actually played in the 2007 Chicago Blues Festival was Lurrie Bell. During the Chicago festival, Lurrie Bell headlined a band that played on a side stage at 4pm on Friday, all-in-all a fairly respectable showing. He was even voted by one Chicago Blues magazine to have had the best, most energetic, performance of the entire weekend. Which is why I say "Thank God for Lurrie Bell." Because on a rainy night in Amsterdam, when the Blues are being confused with showmanship, hollered lyrics, and mechanical fretboard work, Lurrie stepped in front of his microphone with his bright red Gibson guitar, and with rain streaking the windows behind the stage smearing the colors of the Amsterdam night, he took control of the stage with his guitar and did what none of the other musicians could, touch us deeply with his playing. As long as the Blues is still alive in one man, the Blues is still alive. Thank God for Lurrie Bell.  BACK to Writings on Europe Copyright © 2007 Reed Spraguehttp://www.yayabiko.com/blog/?page_id=19shapeimage_1_link_0
Blues, Shmooze, and Hucksterism