Don’t stand too close to Classie Ballou. If lightning strikes again, you might get hit. It struck first in 1952, when Classie and family were summoned to a studio in Lake Charles to back Boozoo Chavis, on what is thought to be the first studio recording session of zydeco music. There was just one problem: according to Chavis, Classie and the band he brought along “had never heard of Zydeco music, let alone played it.”

They let this little recipe for disaster simmer in the studio for about eight hours before giving up.  But somebody must have left the back burner on, because a couple of years later, when Goldband Records finally released a song from that session, it became not only the first classic zydeco hit but also the biggest seller the company had ever had. The track was “Paper in My Shoe” (on Goldband’s Folk Star label). Continue reading…

Like many blues artists, Carolyn Wonderland labored for a long time in obscurity before attracting national attention. For years she and her band played on weekends for next to nothing in Houston’s Last Concert Cafe, a semi-Deadhead scene where she seemed destined to become every aging Texas hippie’s dream girl, if she lived long enough.

By 1994 she had earned enough stature in Houston’s blues community to get the closing slot on a fund-raiser for Johnny “Clyde” Copeland at Rockefeller’s, a performance at which she held her own with everybody who was anyone in East Texas blues, from Lavelle White and Trudy Lynn to Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters, and the immortal Eugene Carrier, B.B. King’s longtime organist.

After she relocated to Austin, someone in that scene brought her guitar playing to Bob Dylan’s attention. Dylan was putting together his current road band, and invited her to audition for the slot now occupied by Denny Freeman. Had that gig worked out, she’d be playing in Spain instead of Portland during the week of our festival. Continue reading…

[NOTE: you can catch James Hunter tonight, on the Conan O’Brian show, playing cuts from his new release, The Hard Way].

I first got wind of British soul singer James Hunter a couple of years ago, shortly after the release of his first stateside release, People Gonna Talk. Hunter is a throwback to the Jackie Wilson/Sam Cooke era of sweet soul music. Backed by a case-hardened band, Hunter plays original material that reflects that era of music—melodic but gritty vocals, tight horns and catchy, danceable and absolutely irresistible tunes—but he’s injected the genre with some fresh vitality and his own take on the music.

When I heard he was playing Seattle’s Triple Door two years ago, I made the trek up north. And wasn’t disappointed. He’s a singer of remarkable flexibility and soul, a quirky but effective guitarist, and a truly charismatic bandleader and showman. The emerging artist began to hit the radar of major media, and the album was nominated for a Grammy. Unfortunately, due to tour routing, we weren’t able to sign him for the 2007 festival.

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The world lost another blues legend yesterday, Bo Diddley, to a heart attack at age 79.

Bo never played the Waterfront Blues Festival. I’d tried to get him to headline opening night on a couple of occasions, but the routing hadn’t worked out. I feel wistful about that now, though at the time, I was relieved it hadn’t panned out. Bo was a lone wolf in this busiiness, flying in solo to a gig with only his suit bag and guitar, stepping out on stage in front of whatever backup band the local promoter had pulled together. Particularly in his later years, Bo was known for unpredictable shows and ragged, unrehearsed backup bands—I should know because three years ago I played guitar in one of Bo’s backup bands. Continue reading…

Singer-songwriter Paul Thorn went 14-4 as a professional boxer (including a televised bout with Roberto Duran that the 29^th-ranked world middleweight lost in a seventh-round TKO). And that makes him more than ready to take the music business head on.

Thorn, a rising star if recent appearances on Conan O’Brien’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s show and seven highly acclaimed recordings are any indication, leans toward a deeply rootsy, Americana sound. Think Delbert McClinton, Bruce Springsteen and John Hiatt. The Tupelo, Mississippi-born preacher’s kid is an achingly soulful singer who covers a lot of musical territory.

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A week ago Saturday the rain began early, pouring from the skies in dark sheets ripped by the flash of lightning and the deafening crack of thunder.

“Seems you brought the weather with you,” quipped a local.

“It does not rain like this in Oregon,” I responded. “Ever.”

It was the kind of tropical storm that four years earlier forced the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival to cancel a full day of programming, a move with repercussions still being felt today. It was the fiscal crisis following that decision, many believe, that prompted the festival board to bring in the deep-pocketed, California production company AEG Live to run the event, and nearly sack festival executive director Quint Davis and producer/founder George Wein, who’ve been putting together the continent’s greatest music festival since its beginning 39 years ago. Festivals, even the grandest of them all, are far more fragile entities than most would ever imagine. Continue reading…

On my first of many trips to New Orleans, now nearly ten years ago, I was hurrying through the French Quarter, late for a lunch meeting with my sister-in-law, and initially didn’t notice the kid playing for tips in the hotel doorway. I hustled past, then stopped in my tracks. What stunned me even more than the kid’s virtuosity was the incongruity of his material—a movement from one of Bach’s suites for unaccompanied cello, its complex line jumping between registers to imply a contrapuntal duet from a single voice, being sung fluidly, effortlessly on an improbable instrument—a trombone. This small black kid with a horn seemed to be channeling Yo Yo Ma. I joined the group on the sidewalk, listening intently, exploding into applause when he hit the final note. Over the next 15 minutes the kid, who looked all of 10 years old, sliced and jabbed the trombone through an eclectic repertoire of some of the most demanding and unlikely material one might ever hear from that instrument. From Bach he moved to John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” blowing masterfully through what may be the toughest chord changes ever written to solo over. Then “Cissy Strut,” the classic by New Orleans funk pioneers, The Meters; some Gershwin; and then ending with “Saints Go Marching In,” reinvented as a cosmic-comic funk tune. 

The kid played this range of material with such dexterity, with such swinging, funky command of not just the instrument but also very disparate musical genres. I was blown away, yes, but even more, I was baffled. This was a trombone. Most places on

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Where do I begin a blog on the Waterfront Blues Festival? Might as well start at the beginning, the source: New Orleans.

I landed here in the Crescent City yesterday afternoon, between the two ferociously musical weekends known as Jazz Fest. This is the slack time between the bookends of arguably the greatest music festival on the planet, 12 stages of brass bands, blues legends, gospel choirs, Zydeco queens, mega-jam-bands, Cajun fiddlers and rock and R&B stars returning to their roots. The city clears house between shows, sending a couple hundred thousand music fans who ventured down the first weekend back home to make way for a new horde the second. Tuesday and Wednesday fall on the eye of a sonic hurricane walled by two densely packed weekends of round-the-clock musical mayhem.

But even in the eye of the storm, the options on this Wednesday evening are daunting.  Offbeat magazine lists more than three-dozen gigs and concerts at various clubs and concert halls around town that would be worth checking out if I had the time, stamina, and credit limit. But I’m down here, I need to keep reminding myself, not to run amok and run up air-miles on my credit card, but to check out acts for WBF’s future lineups. Among the gigs I’m considering: Continue reading…

Here begins my new blog on the Waterfront Blues Festival, offering you a glimpse into the trials, tribulations, late hour jam sessions, haggling, multi-shot lattés, promo-pack sorting, gig-hopping, and concert binging that goes into putting together the lineup for the West Coast’s largest blues festival. A hundred acts on four stages and five blues cruises, but, more to the point: 200-plus hotel rooms, 80 or more limo runs to and from the airport, bands with bass players flying in from Austin and drummers from New Orleans, rider demands that range from vegan pasta dishes to pork rinds, and demands for odd and obsolete keyboards (anyone know where I can find a Vox Continental?) no one has performed on live in these parts for three decades.

You have a special question about how all this gets put together? Wonder how I find and decide on the acts that make it into the program? Want to know why on earth B.B. King is playing Bend and Jacksonville over the July 4 weekend but not Waterfront Park (I’ll get to that one later)? Want to know how to put your little brother’s bar band from Bakersfield on my radar? Have a suggestion you’re convinced will improve the look, feel or vibe of our event? A favorite act you’d like to see on our stages? Well, I will likely be too harried between now and opening night to respond to any of these, but it’s worth a shot. Send me your questions, suggestions and tirades to the email link below and we’ll see how much of this I can stomach. Starbucks virtual gift cards accepted.

-Peter Dammann, Talent Coordinator

P.S.: If you want to know more about me, and the circuitous path that led me to this strange gig, you can check out Tom D’Antoni’s piece for Artbeat on Oregon Public Broadcasting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN0ePVQbQjU, or Marty Hughley’s profile that ran off the front page of the Oregonian on July 5, 2004…

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