New Orleans, bastion of Catholicism that it is, may have a higher cathedral-per-person ratio than anywhere outside of Europe. For its citizens, however, the coming of the Christmas holiday has never been signaled by anything in a belfry. The true call chimed from the first few seconds of “Please Come Home For Christmas,” an oft-imitated but never duplicated blues classic put out on the King label by the legendary Charles Mose Brown. It was recorded by a man who’d been born in Texas, and made his name in California, of all places, but his style of blues was perfect for local tastes: genteel, calm, romantic, yet aching for release, and more often than not, achieving it.
A classically trained pianist and member of Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, Brown went solo back in 1948 with his first single, “Driftin’ Blues.” Back then his style was called “cool blues” or “cocktail blues,” a laid-back lament with a jazzy edge that crossed all styles of then-popular black music and helped open up the West Coast as a blues mecca in its own right, specifically the Central Avenue scene in Los Angeles. Brown was an immediate sensation, suavely duking it out on the R&B charts with fellow mellow melodian Nat “King” Cole. Genius or no, his career slumped in the 60s due to his refusal to go pop like Cole, and a dispute with a booking agent that left him blacklisted for years. It left him washing windows to pay for his integrity, and his career had only begun to recover in the past decade, thanks to the admiration of big names like Bonnie Raitt and Eric Clapton. When he finally succumbed to congestive heart failure, peacefully in his sleep on January 21, in Oakland, California, early Christmas-themed songs like the above and “Merry Christmas Baby” remained his best-known work.
Not to say that Charles ever stopped trying: a true bluesman above all, he lived for the road, for the feeling of pleasing his audience and himself at the same time. Having weathered musical changes by going where the work was, he managed to leave behind a good-sized catalog that shows a breadth even “Please Come Home For Christmas” can only hint at. And breadth was his stylistic trump card: he was a major influence on other young geniuses such as Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, and Ms. Raitt had taken in later years to calling him and Ruth Brown “the Adam and Eve of R&B.” His amazing interpretive abilities earned him a slew of Grammys, W.C. Handy Awards, and an Arts Heritage Fellowship Award presented by Hillary Clinton. And just recently, he achieved his highest honor: a scheduled introduction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this March 15 under the category “Early Influence.”
Maybe you’d like to get under his influence yourself, or reacquaint yourself with the master. It’s a daunting task for someone with such a long, checkered career, but there are a few signposts. Driftin’ BluesóThe Best Of Charles Brown (Collectibles, 1992) comprises most of his earliest hits on the Aladdin and Imperial labels, including the title cut, “Black Night,” “”Merry Christmas Baby,” and “Fool’s Paradise.” Please Come Home For Christmas (King) is the only place on CD to find the original version of the title cut: an all-Christmas album, it features classics like “Winter Wonderland” rendered so majestically mellow you can hear the snow fall on your window.
Blues And Brown (1971, reissued by Jewel in 1995) is the only surviving document of his troubled middle period, a misguided if fitfully rewarding attempt to recast Brown as a gritty funk/soul groaner. His renaissance began in earnest with 1994’s These Blues, which finally found him a comfortable home at Verve and his best backing band since Ike was in office. There followed a string of equally remarkable efforts, culminating with 1998’s jazzier So Goes Love. And if you’d like to hear Brown in town, one of his last recorded concerts is now available on the web at http://www.liveconcerts.com/lcarchive/concerts/980528/Charles_Brown/Featuring the entire of last May’s performance at the House Of Blues, it showcases the master and his Verve band at peak performance and ends with Brown all alone on stage, speaking clearly with nothing but his piano. A fitting closure for a man who made even the best-loved classics sound all his own.
Another recent release that unwittingly turned into a final statement: Jimmy Rogers’ aptly-titled Blues Blues Blues (WEA/Atlantic), an intended comeback album to the much-heralded Muddy Waters band guitarist that includes musical assistance/tribute paid by everyone from Jimmy Page to Stephen Stills to Taj Mahal. Featuring fiery versions of his own classics (“Ludella,” “That’s All Right”) as well as others’ standards (“Bright Lights Big City,” “Don’t Start Me To Talkin'”), this release shows that the late guitarist was much more than a sideman. In fact, although his voice is often considered an offshoot of Muddy’s, it actually has a bit of Lonnie Johnson high tenor in there as well. More than just a nice gesture, “Blues Blues Blues” proves that Water’s associations with his sidemen were more than a little mutually beneficial.
Michelle Willson, on the other hand, is alive and well and Tryin’ To Make A Little Love (PGD/Bullseye). On her follow-up to 1996’s So Emotional, Boston’s answer to Dinah Washington attempts to jump-start her sound, recording here in town (at Ultrasonic studios) and covering a wider array of artists than usual. On the surface, it works: her sassy whipcrack of a voice raises welts on material from Joan Osborne to Los Lobos to the Dan Penn/Spooner Oldham songbook, and the production is much improved; finally, she has a big enough stage to work from. Unfortunately, a stage works best, because Willson still seems more intent on portraying her songs rather than living inside them. Maybe a visit to the masters would be in order?
She might start with Guitar Shorty. The force of nature will be tearing the stage up at Levon Helm’s on Tuesday, March 16. Shorty is one of the rare bluesmen who still preaches the music rather than performing it, and his fire spills over into his much-heralded stage show. Simply put, he’s a piece of genuine Americana, one that lives loud and dresses to kill.
Studebaker John and the Hawks bring their boogie-fried Chicago-Style blues to the American Café on Thursday, March 4 and Friday, March 5. Studebaker isn’t the most original bluesman around, and his vocals are lightweight, but the band’s got groove for days, jumping from John Lee Hooker to Bo Diddley and all points in between. Rod Piazza and the Mighty Fliers serve up more Windy City wailing at Levon’s on Sunday the 21.
More suave savoir-faire is offered this month by Little Charlie and the Nightcats, who slide into Levon Helm’s on Sunday, March 7 to lay down some ultra-cool hipster gloss off their new album, Shadow Of The Blues (Alligator). A darker, meaner, funkier set of shuffles fills Levon’s on Tuesday, March 9 as New Orleans welcomes the James Harman Band. Tab Benoit serves up even grittier, locally funkified Swampland Jams at the Mid City Rock and Bowl on Saturday the 13; this white whirlwind will make you forget all about blue-eyed poster boys like Jonny Lang. That’s a good thing, trust me.
Effective this month, Robert Fontenot has assumed the authorship of the “Bluesworthy” column, Fontenot, a journalism graduate from UNO and lifelong resident of New Orleans, is a freelance writer/musician/entrepreneur whose career began at Rock and Roll Confidential, which was headed at the time by former Rolling Stone Chief Editor Dave Marsh. Since then, Fontenot’s work has been featured in Gambit, Shot In LA and as a staff writer for the venerable L.A. movie review magazine, Audience.
