Bellower of the Blues, John Long Celebrates Vintage Country Sound
01/29/07
By JOSEF WOODARD
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
Making a rare visit to the West Coast, remarkable bluesman John Long floated up to the stage of Warren Hall on Saturday like a man out of time from an American dream.
This particular dream had to do with the waning art of the country blues genre and its original musicians, a rural counterpoint to the plugged-in electric blues from Chicago that made the Rolling Stones possible.
Old masters are dying out, but the 56-year-old Long, a striking Missouri-born and -raised guitar-singer-harmonica man, is thankfully one of those few on the rise, thanks to the recent release of his album "Lost & Found." If the album's earthy warmth and unpretentious authenticity grabs a listener, then seeing and hearing the man live confirms that strong impression.
Long showed up in his Saturday best -- a sharp gray suit and tie, a black fedora with a feather, specs and a stage manner that was anything but slick. He sang with grit and wisdom, and played guitar in a fleshy, not flashy fingerstyle way, sometimes tossing in nice, greasy bottleneck guitar parts. He completed the self-made man impression with blues harp brush strokes and the steady stomp of his rhythm-keeping heel. Nice shoes, too.
What Long doesn't appear to have is an inflated ego, in part because he is a confirmed fan of old blues heroes, whose legacy he humbly extends into the 21st century. As much as he digs deep into the musical vocabulary of his veteran heroes, Long also is a fine songwriter, often co-writing with his brother Claude.
Saturday's set included the semi-autobiographical tribute to the city he was born in, "Leavin' St. Louis" (''love St. Louis, but I just can't hang around/'cause you known some no-good people just don't want me around.")
His voice wriggles around freely, from a drawling low range to leaps up into falsetto, as on the song "Blues and Boogie Woogie." On the raucous "Hell Cat," blues harpist Al Blake and pianist Fred Kaplan joined in, but mostly Long summoned a big sound by his not-so-lonesome. He closed his first set with an old Petie Wheatstraw tune, moaning and bragging, in true blues fashion, "don't hang my clothes on no barbed-wire line."
Blues players and aficionados in the know have been singing Long's praises, including Muddy Waters and, more recently, Blake, who helped make the necessary introductions to his record label, Delta Groove. In Long's introduction Saturday, Blake said of him, "There's nobody who gets inside the country blues like John Long."
The country blues niche may be a more familiar sound in Santa Barbara, partly thanks to the long-time role of famed duo Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan, who were in the audience that night. This was a special night on more than just the purely musical front, as it was a "member appreciation" show kicking off the 30th anniversary of the Santa Barbara Blues Society, which often -- and rightly -- boasts its status as the longest-running blues society in the country.
As Long's show nicely demonstrated, keeping the torch of the American art of blues is a noble and important cause. Culture cred aside, good blues also was lubrication for a righteous Saturday night party.
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