BluesWax News Page March 13, 2008
This Week in BluesWax:
Bernard Allison
- In the E-zine: BluesWax is Sittin' In With Bernard Allison. Don Wilcock caught up with Allison aboard the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise and the results are a must read interview covering everything from his daddy to his future in music.
- On the News Page: Candye Kane Health Update; Delta Groove All-Star Blues Revue; Bluesville Picks To Click; Simply The Blues Festival; Buddy Guy Show; Label News; and much more News That's Blues!
- On the Photo Page: Some great shots of Honeyboy Edwards courtesy of Joseph A. Rosen and www.josepharosen.com.
- On the Blues Bytes page: BluesWax is Sittin' In With Tommy Castro. Don Wilcock sat down with Castro aboard the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise to talk about the LRB Revue and much more. Be sure to check out the world's best Blues comic strip, Buddy and Hopkins!
- On the Blues Beat page: A live performance by one of the legends is a truly unique experience. Check out this review of the great Honeyboy Edwards' show in Connecticut.
- Under BluesWax Picks: Mark Goodman reviews Anders Osborne's Coming Down; Bob Putignano reviews Stevie Ray Vaughan's Solos, Sessions & Encores; Jeff Richards reviews Webb Wilder's Born To Be Wilder; Rick Galusha reviews John Juke Logan's The Chill; Mark Harbeke reviews Delta Highway's Westbound Blues; plus a review of Ray Bonneville's Goin' By Feel.
- One Year Ago Today In BluesWax: BluesWax was "Sittin' In With Barbara Blue." James Walker sat down with the reigning Queen of Beale Street Barbara Blue to discuss recording, Blues Music Awards nominations, and much more.
- Don't forget to play the Blues Trivia Game: Remember, everyone who plays is in the drawing for the prize! This week's prize: a six-pack of Blues! The Blues vault has been tapped and we have a six-pack of CDs for your listening pleasure! Play Today!
BluesWax Sittin' In With
Bernard Allison
A Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise Interview
Part One
By Don Wilcock
Bernard Allison Aboard
The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
www.josepharosen.com
Luther Allison gave his son some of the greatest gifts a father can give a son. He gave him a comfortable home environment filled with the music that inspired his career and he taught him what he knew about his art. Luther also recognized that the pain Bernard felt toward watching his dad die a slow, agonizing death from a brain tumor was too much to put him through, so on his deathbed Luther requested that Bernard go out and finish his daddy's gigs.
Some in the family - and some in the Blues community - thought it wrong that Bernard was not at his father's funeral in 1997, but what Bernard put himself through on the road may have been far more poignant and difficult than it would have been to be there. The endless lines of fans offering condolences led Bernard to run to the bottle and hide. In this interview he talks about how his family helped pull him out of his drinking addiction to carry on the Allison legacy. He says that his father is with him every night he goes onstage, and he has a new album, Chills & Thrills, that proves eleven years after Dad's death that the Allison legacy is indeed intact and that, while he performs some of his dad's songs, Bernard Allison has indeed found his own voice.
The conversation below comes from two interviews done on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise in October 2007.
Don Wilcock for BluesWax: When I presented you in Troy, New York, ten years ago, you didn't sound anything like you did last night. I heard so much more of your father's heart and soul in your music now than I heard back then.
Bernard Allison: Oh, yeah, definitely. I'm maturing more. Guitar players go through a phase and the big thing with me is when I came back from Europe everyone came to see how close I was to my father. I kinda had to prove to them I either sound like him or I don't sound like him, and like I told 'em, I said, "I was born in this," and my daddy said, "Don't go out there and try and be me. You be you!"
BW: What I heard last night in you that I used to hear in your dad, and I didn't hear in you ten years ago, was the eclecticism to be able to go into very soulful music to the really raucous and hard-driving guitar work. And that's what he had that was very special. I think that album your dad did for Alligator, the live one at the Chicago Blues Festival, is probably the best live Blues album I've ever heard.
BA: Oh, yeah, the dynamic versatility and yeah, we are very familiar and I worked on that because we can go and play the different forms of Blues and also give a show for the people like, okay, this is the old school. This is the new school. This is a taste of the old school with a little Funk or with a little Rock or Gospel and [we can] utilize everything I know as opposed to [just] Luther Allison or Albert King. Combine 'em all!
BW: I don't want to put words in your mouth, but do you feel in order for Blues to be more than just an archival music that you have to do that?
BA: You have to take risks. You have to change. The twelve-bar structure has been done over and over. The only thing you can do new to it is change words. So, what we try to do is innovate all of that and use the other influences to try and attract a younger generation that don't know anything about Blues. If they hear Jimi Hendrix, they say, "Wow! That's Blues? I didn't know that."
"There's a lot of my dad in me.
It will always be there."
BW: You talked about your dad. You kind of had an albatross around your neck when he died because people did want you to either be like him or totally be unlike him. I sense that you're more relaxed in that regard. That after ten years, that you don't feel that pressure anymore.
BA: No, because I've basically proven my point. There's a lot of my dad in me. It will always be there. I always record a couple of his tunes every album and I always do a couple of his tunes live. So, I'm being honest with my family name, but I'm doing what my daddy asked me to do which is go out and do what you know. So what you wanna play and get that across to the people. If everybody went to hear Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eric Clapton, these are all trademark names. They've already made their way. Now it's time for you to make your way. I think I'm doing a good job. I'm honest with it. I respect the Allison name. I still have a lot of my dad's ideas that I want to present to people as well as my own.
BW: Can you articulate what you mean by your dad's ideas?
BA: There's a lot of unreleased things and a lot of projects that I have access to and I'm just gradually slippin' 'em in and out. There's one, a couple of DVDs, live recordings when I was in my father's band actually; as of now there's nothing available to the public with me and my father.
BW: Really?
BA: I have access to a lot of it. I've been talking to Ruf Records and some other companies about how to go about it. I just want to bring things out to the people. My dad wouldn't want it to sit. The same thing with all of the guitars. He wouldn't want them to go to Hard Rock Cafés.
BW: Your dad asked you to carry the torch and you actually weren't at his funeral. Did you take any grief for that?
BA: Not much. There was a few family members that didn't understand, but at the same time I was doing what my dad wanted me to do and what I had previously talked to my parents at a young age about. So, when my dad was sick and in the hospital, I talked to him on the phone. He said, "I'm in the hospital. I need to be here and let the doctors do what they need to do. All I ask you to do is could you finish these gigs for me?" He wasn't into canceling shows, but in the back of my mind I knew I couldn't be there. It would affect me too much. And he wanted me to continue what I'm doing. So, that's what I did.
BW: Do you ever feel he's with you?
BA: He's with me every day. Like you say, I sing a song for him every night and he's smiling down.
BW: I got to present him at a Blues festival in 1970 at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. I was 26 at the time and I remember getting off the stage and thinking to myself, "It's okay. I've done something that I'll remember for the rest of my life." It had a profound affect on me. I also got to interview him within a year of his death and your dad was so happy at that point in time. He'd spent so much time in Europe and felt that he hadn't made the kind of impact here that he wanted. I wrote Buddy Guy's biography and we talked a lot about the comparison between himself and Buddy Guy and how he was now coming out and into his own the way that Buddy had. I loved your father.
BA: Oh, and like you say, if you got to know him other than the musician, he was just so down to earth and a sweetheart of a guy. He reminds me a lot of B.B. King and Lonnie Brooks, that whole scene that I grew up with. He was just honest and open.
BW: Who do you have in your current band?
BA: Rusty Hall on keyboards. Rusty came from Lonnie Brooks and Curtis Salgado. We went to high school together, so we're both from Peoria, Illinois. Mario Dawson on drums is originally from Chicago.
BW: He's a monster.
BA: Yeah.
BW: Has he been with anybody other than you?
BA: He comes from a whole other thing, R&B and Gospel, from Mint Condition. He played with Jellybean. Jassen Wilber's been with me going on eight years, the bass player, just the four of us. It's starting to gel. We've been together. Rusty's been in about a year now. Mario started in January. We've got something special here and the record [Chills & Thrills] shows it.
BW: I loved your dad. I think about him a lot.
BA: He's always with me and I think that in my mind. I'm onstage sometimes. "Bad Love," when I hit that vocal, I was like, "Wow! That sounded like my dad," but he's in that room. He loved Ronnie [Baker Brooks who played with Bernard on the cruise]. I gave Ronnie one of his guitars. So, he was smiling down on us like, "You guys go ahead. He's got 'em now. There you go, face to face."
BW: What's on the horizon for you? What are you up to these days?
BA: Just finished a new record on Jazz House Records, Chills & Thrills. It will probably be out the latter part of April in the States. We've got a release in Europe in February just since I have those tours already lined up.
BW: Are you still bigger in Europe than you are in the United States?
BA: Yeah, you gotta look at it. I was there twelve years and exclusively played Europe for twelve years. Didn't ever play the States. So, we built that following in Europe on top of my dad's following and this tour originated like in '76. My dad, Muddy Waters, Sugar Blue, and Taj Mahal, B. B. King, they all started this tour.
BW: What do you mean by "this tour?"
BA: It's the same tour, the same clubs. A lot of new venues have been added on. So, like every January is like exclusively Germany, the same period every year. So, I moved over in '89 and I was my dad's bandleader. So, I played this tour with him and now when I play I see adults who were kids then. Now, they're adults with their families. So that the tradition has kept growing and growing.
BW: [After discussing Buddy Guy] I think the only other guitar player I ever saw who had the dynamics you describe in Buddy is your dad.
BA: Oh, yeah.
BW: I hadn't seen you for ten years until I saw you the first night here on the cruise.
BA: Dynamics, first of all, Koko Taylor taught me. That's who I learned it from. Playing behind a female vocalist and having the discipline to know when to break it down, when to do it.
BW: Why is the fact she's a female significant in the dynamics?
BA: I think there's just something about female vocalists and being a guitar player, it's very easy to step on a vocal part and Koko was good. When she wants it down, she gives you that look. Don't set foot and if it don't come down, okay. She's gonna let you know and she's not afraid to let the people know that you made a mistake or you're not listening.
BW: Were you scared of her when you started?
BA: The only thing I'm afraid of is life. Nothing scares me. It was my choice to get in this business and I knew the challenges that would come along with it.
BW: That came from watching your dad.
BA: Oh, yeah. I wanted to know the real thing. I didn't want to get a book and try to read it or copy a movie. I learned from the masters and being at a young age and the way I was raised, we were raised to sit back and listen and I do it all the time. I'm a very quiet person. I hear everything and I store it all. Everything I learned from Koko and Pop is stored in memory. Without that I would not be the musician I am today. I would not have that discipline and the people I met through Koko, Willie Dixon, and Albert King, the whole line of people, the same system for me after listening to everything.
To be continued...
Don Wilcock is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Don at blueswax@visnat.com.
CONGRATULATIONS!!! " nap " is this week's winner of the BluesWax SIX-CD Prize Pack: A fine selection of six CDs from our extensive prize vault. Go to the Backstage to collect your prizes. Remember to play the quiz each week for your chance to win great prizes!
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