A Eulogy for the Blues

                            Shoe Suede Blues
                      March 29, 2002 The Thirsty Ear

                    Koko Taylor and The Blues Machine
                    April 12, 2002 PromoWest Pavilion

     When I was 16 years old I saw Cream. Canned Heat opened the show. At the time I thought I was witnessing two great blues bands. I was wrong. While both bands played different styles of blues music, it's obvious to me now that it was more "paying homage" than anything. Oh sure, Heat could certainly boogie. And there's no argument that Eric Clapton is one fine guitar player. But Clapton is to the blues as say...UB40 is to reggae. I'm sure Eric would agree that he's no Albert King....Freddie King...or Elmore James. He's even humble enough to refer to Buddy Guy as the "World's best living guitar player." Whether UB40 thinks they're as good as Bob Marley...Jimmy Cliff...or Peter Tosh I can't say. But they don't come close to any of them.

     I heard a band called Blue Suede Shoes was going to play a local club called the Thirsty Ear, a delightful little pub where I saw Ronnie Spector a couple of years back.The group features Peter Tork...the Monkees alumnus. If you remember the Monkees you know that Peter was...uh...the dumb blonde. He's out on the road now in an effort to shake the "dumb blonde who really wasn't a musician" image. I guess I can't blame him for that.

     The crowd...and I'm being kind here...reminded me of a 30th reunion of anybody's high school audio/visual club. You know...the geeky guys who wheeled in the projectors and such. I overheard a not so subtle smug comment by the keyboard player, when asked by a middle aged man in a...yes...Monkees t shirt...if they were going to play any pre-fab four tunes. "We play the blues." is all he said...nose straight in the air. They played blues SONGS...that's for sure. But it was hardly the blues. Even an original called "Even White Boys Get the Blues"...well...they were right in one sense. By the time they finished playing the song I was pretty depressed.

Hey, I'm not trying to be too hard on these boys. But Tork seemed inconsequential...at best...in this band. He's a fair to middling musician and can certainly be entertaining. Truth be known...Peter did a valiant job performing old Monkees hits...particularly"A Little Bit You. A Little Bit Me." Yet the band didn't really NEED him in the mix of trying to be a blues band and ending up being an entertaining bar band. Hey...there's no crime in this. But the blues it ain't.

     Koko Taylor on the other hand. Koko IS the blues. I know she's getting up there. At 66 and having survived some relatively serious heart problems a few years ago, I'd say she's still living the blues too. Sure the vocal range isn't what it was 15 years ago. And she looked a little tired by the end of the show....but it was a BLUES show. When you are the blues...live the blues...then and only then can you really SING the blues. Both shows were predictable...cliched even. I can't fault Shoe Suede Blues for playing "Blue Suede Shoes." Or "Mustang Sally." But when Koko and her crack band The Blues Machine play, they can make even Bob Seger's"Come To Papa (Mama)" sound as if Howlin' Wolf wrote it. Koko Taylor belongs to a bus ridin', beer joint playin' blues culture that I fear is not long for this world.

     Ms. Taylor and her band took us "Way down to the basement." Whether she is belting out "Hound Dog," "Sweet Home Chicago," "I'd Rather Be Blind (Than See You Leave)," or her signature, the Willie Dixon-penned anthem "Wang Dang Doodle" she exudes a genuiness that I haven't experienced in many shows. Sixties rock musicians performed and many times STOLE a great many of these blues standards. Some of these people were noble and paid homage. Too many did not. Koko's performance the other night reminded me of seeing John Lee Hooker. By the time I saw him he was old. But it was his attitude that made him who he was. And Koko Taylor has this. She could forget the words and it would STILL be there. So at the end of the show...while her band softly jammed instrumentally through "Wang Dang Doodle"...while Koko spent way too much time signing autographs from the front of the stage...I found it easy to forgive her. I realized that the blues as a genre is in trouble. The big people are almost all gone now. Muddy Waters, Albert Collins, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Koko's big influences like Big Mama Thornton and Bessie Smith...they're all dead. And the lifestyle is following close behind.

Koko still performs 100 times a year. B.B. King is 75 and tours most of the time. How much longer either of them is able to go on is anybody?s guess.      I know there are young blues people out there. But somehow I don?t think all the Jonny Langs or Kenny Wayne Shepards or Tommy Castros (and especially not the Peter Torks) in the world will preserve blues music and its culture as close to its essence as even Janis Joplin did. No more shark skin suits. No more "Big Mamas: in sequined dresses. No more playing a guitar solo in the middle of the crowd. No more going "way down to the basement." Eloquent guitar work or raw vocals do not a blues (wo)man make.

Ironically, Kokos gig was sponsored by Winston Salem. They gave out free cigarettes at the door. It was as if the tobacco company was saying, "Hey. Get hooked again and you won't live long enough to see the blues die." Muddy Waters could have written a song about that. I can only hope that i'm wrong. Either way, I'm on my way down to the basement right now...all the way down.

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