PREVIEW MUSIC
blues style which they evolved in the l
. three masters ofthe blues guitar.
j overture, Bartok‘s 2nd Violin Concerto
m2- Sfinghu; , the blues
Kenny Mathieson looks at ; the career of blues master fi Jimmy Rogers
Count ‘em. Not one, not two, but
Sadly, ifyou don‘t already have a ticket, it’s too late to hear BB. King and Robert Cray share a double-bill at The Playhouse in Edinburgh. but the sold-out notices haven‘t yet gone up on the three dates for singer and guitar man Jimmy Rogers. Given that both King and Cray are pretty regular visitors. the rare chance to hear Rogers is arguably the more intriguing prospect, in any case. Between them, they span a fair bit of blues history. Rogers came out of . the Mississippi Delta (he was born in i Ruleville in 1924, to be precise) playing the original raw. mournful. Southern country blues style. and took the well-travelled road north to 3 Chicago in 1938. where he linked up with a certain Muddy Waters, Otis Spann. and Little Walter. in what one American writer has been moved to describe the best blues band ever heard on the earth. ‘ The gutsy. raucous. electric. urban ’
.9.
The real Jimmy Rogers 4
Blues, and a well-received 1990 session from the Texas-based Antone‘s Records, Ludella, which featured Chicago veterans like Pinetop Perkins and Herbert Sumlin, and the young Texan harmonica virtuoso Kim Wilson (of Fabulous Thunderbirds fame), who also produced the session.
‘The music I played on the album, and the music I’m playing right now, is the same music I‘ve always been playing. I hope I’m playing it better than before, but it‘s still the same blues. The blues doesn‘t change any more than human nature does, and I just play what I feel inside, like I always did. I‘m not through with the blues, and they’re not through with me. I believe that I have something to say in my music that other musicians can’t, and I’m going to keep on trying to get it said as long as Icanf The Jimmy Rogers Blues Band are at the City Hall in Glasgow on Thur 19, The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on Fri 20, and The Music Hall in : Aberdeen on SatZl.
proud of his contribution to it, but he isn‘t ready to live on nostalgia just yet.
‘Sure, we knew what we were doing in that band with Muddy was something different — we took the blues ofguys like Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red and put it up on the beat. and what we did would just click like a padlock. A lot of musicians didn‘t know the combination to that lock. I‘m real proud of all the things I‘ve done in the past. but I‘m really not the sort of guy who likes to sit around remembering the good old days. There‘s plenty of time for nostalgia when you can‘t do anything any more, but as long as I‘m alive and well, then I‘m only interested in the present.‘
; Recent releases from the
f singer-guitarist include a re-issue of l sessions from 1972 and 1973 with the late Freddie King on guitar, culled from the vaults of Shelter Records and issued by the London-based Sequel Records under the title Chicago '3' Jimmy Rogers Sings The
405 and 50s in the Windy City was taken to new heights (and to a new mass audience) by BB. King, and Robert Cray has picked up on that tradition and taken it off on a slightly ; different. more soul- and rock-influenced direction. That‘s a
lot ofblues history packed into three guitar cases, and Rogers is rightly
1991.
Well-oiled
Orchestral touring within the UK, particularly with London orchestras venturing north of the border, is not something which happens with great trequency. The London Symphony Orchestra's biennial live-city tour, which opens in London on Thursday 12 and includes a Glasgow performance on Sunday 15, is therefore to be welcomed. This year, their programme tor all concerts is Mozart’s ll Seraglio
and Mahler's Symphony No 1.
Conductor is Michael Tilson Thomas,
the LSO's Principal Conductor, and soloist in the Bartok is the internationally-acclalmed prodigy Midori, on herlirst UKtour-at the age
of only 21 . As pan of a sixteen-year relationship, the tour is sponsored by Shell UK who are also supporting the Shell-L80 scholarship, won this year i i by the brilliant titteen-year-old l timpanist Colin Currie from Edinburgh. | I (Carol Main)
E Under Pressure, and I wanted it to be a guitar album. It was originally
: going to be with Pat Metheny. but
. that project is sort ofon-hold now,
and when it didn‘t work out, I
naturally thought of Bill, who is not
ma- Pressure
drop
John Scofield
The return of John Scofield is always a pleasure to contemplate, and it is an even greater one when he brings with him saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Bill Stewart, who was extremely impressive on his Scottish debut when the band last passed this way, at the Glasgow Jazz Festival in
Since then, Scofield has issued the least characteristic of his Blue Note albums, Grace Under Pressure, which teamed him with Bill Frisell (an association originally forged in Marc J ohnson‘s Bass Desires band), drummer Joey Baron, and bass maestro Charlie Haden. His next album for the label is already in the can, but won‘t see the light ofday until next year.
‘The next record is back to the Quartet. but I wanted to do something a little different on Grace
only a great guitar player, but can i make the music really come alive in a non-soloistic. orchestrated kind of , way. I wanted to play with him again, but in a situation where I wrote all 5 the music‘. j A Scofield—Metheny collaboration 3 is a fascinating project, especially if it E is envisaged in ajazz context, as l against an electric-fusion one, but we l will have to wait awhile yet for that one, it seems. For the moment, though, we can content ourselves : with another chance to hear one of the tightest and most creative working bands currently playing in jazz. (Joe Alexander) i The John Scofield Quartet play at the , Queen ’3 Hall in Edinburgh on Fri 13, l
the City Hall in Glasgow on Sat 14,
and The Music Hall in Aberdeen on | Sun15.
The List 6- 19 November 1992 29