Burnley National Blues Festival

Burnley Mechanics 21st – 23rd March 2008

Blues & Rhythm

This year’s festival, the twentieth, promised to be something special, and it was, with the strongest line-up of any British festival for many years. This was reflected in sell-out crowds each night with festival goers braving rain, wind and snow to get there. Looking round the Mechanics, we are always amazed at the loyal fans who turn up year after year, this year was no exception, with a good many familiar faces, all out to enjoy the cream of the crop of the current blues scene.

The opening act on the main stage on Friday, Denmark’s Thorbjφrn Risager, proved to have a solid, soulful voice, ably backed by his five piece band (trumpet, sax, bass, drums, piano, plus Risager himself on guitar) on a mixture of blues and boogies all flavoured by a good dose of Louisiana sauce, a good start.

Then it was on to our first US guest: Earl Thomas has rapidly established himself as a favourite with the Burnley and Colne crowds over the last few years. He has a great soul voice and previous shows over here have highlighted this to great effect. This year, his act veered more to the blue, with number like ‘Got My Mojo Working’ but to be honest, he’s far better when he sticks to his own stuff, such as ‘Last Train To Paris’ and the great ‘Don’t Be Lyin’ – both from his latest album, ‘Soulshine’. A little man with a big voice, Earl Thomas pleased both his own fans and the many festivalgoers who perhaps were seeing him for the first time.

Another Burnley/Colne favourite followed: opening with an extended version of ‘Juke’, Little Charlie and The Nightcats did not disappoint and were usual right on top of that Walter Jacobs/Myers Brothers sound, with great performances of a wide variety of material, taking in Sonny Boy Williamson and Kent Harris along the way. Rick Estrin is the ideal front man, always turning in an entertaining set with his superb harmonica playing set against a swinging background on 1950s styled Chicago blues. Estrin can play powerfully in a Little Walter style, sensitively in a Sonny Boy style, or just about any style required. Estrin has to be just about the best blues harmonica player on the circuit bar none. Equally talented is guitarist Charlie Baty, who backs Rick with everything from the Myers Brothers styled guitar to tough Chicago styled blues. Charlie himself played a stunning instrumental, demonstrating that he too is just about the best you are likely to see. Other numbers performed included several old favourites: ‘Eyes Like A Cat’, ‘My Next Ex Wife’ and in response to requests from the crowd, ‘Dump That Chump’ earning them a standing ovation from the crowd, fantastic. This is likely to be Charlie’s last UK trip as he is going into semi-retirement, but Rick is carrying on with the band, to be known as Rick Estrin and the Nightcats, with new guitarist Chris Anderson.

Saturday featured a diverse line up from raunchy blues shouting from Angela Brown: country blues with duo Johnny Mars and Michael Roach; with the Michael Roach band; to 1940s R&B piano star Little Willie Littlefield.
Angela Brown’s set proved she has lost none of her power or charisma over the years. Once a semi-permanent festival player, it seems a while since we last saw her at Burnley, but the wait was worth it. On numbers like ‘People Will Be People’, ‘Let The Back Door Hit Ya’ and the rousing ‘Glory Glory’, Angela proved that she can still get the crowd eating out of her hands.

The Michael Roach band featuring Johnny Mars is a strange combination of horns and keyboard, with sometimes-acoustic guitar and Mars’ amplified harmonica – very few artists have successfully combined the harmonica with a horn section. The horn section, which included the excellent Paul Corey and Cootie Alexander were a joy to behold, after experiencing several lesser horn players in previous bands. That said we are not altogether sure whether Muddy Walters numbers done in James Brown funk style really work. They worked their way through Junior Well’ ‘Messing With The Kid’ with Sam and Dave style sax riffs, ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, with Gizmo on the harmonica to sound like a pipe organ playing ‘Amazing Grace’ and Bo Carter’s ‘All Round Man’.
Michael Roach then put down his guitar and became a soul singer. Several of the numbers performed were Roach originals and general arrangements were in the Sax or James Brown styles with a Billy Preston styled organ thrown in. The best two of their set were Bobby Bland’s ‘I Pity The Fool’ with a tough Joe Houston style tenor solo from Paul Corey and Hank Ballard’s ‘Let’s Go, ‘Let’s Go, Let’s Go’ which stuck reasonably close to the Ballard arrangement and benefited from Angela Brown joining. Michael Roach to put in a powerful vocal. The Jerry McCain styled harmonica solo seeming just a little out of place but good all the same. A mixed bag.

Star of the festival, Little Willie Littlefield took to the stage after Mike Sanchez and his band had set the place rocking with Johnny Guitar Watson’s ‘Highway 60’ featuring their young guitarist Oliver on a solo not at all like Watson, but very nicely played. Brook Benton’s ‘Kiddio’ got the usual Sanchez treatment, as did Willie Egan’s ‘Come On’ and a tribute to Ike Turner with a killer version of ‘Rocket 88’. The horn section really came into its own here, playing in unison with the guitar, they practically duplicated Ike’s 1951 sound . . . and then the man himself Little Willie Littlefield took the stage.

Willie opened solo on the piano with ‘Every Day I Have The Blues’ and within the first minute the sound of Willie’s left hand rhythm and rolling right hand improvisations changed the face of the festival to 1950s Texas or L.A. Littlefield, Amos Milburn and Johnny Jones were, is one of those pianists who can take any song and when it comes out the other end, it’s blues. His piano style, which owes a lot to Milburn, is one of really fluent and fluid blues playing, the likes of which are now few and far between. He can take ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ and churn it out as a unique Littlefield type number to a boogie rhythm, and he did.
Joined by the Sanchez’s band after a few numbers, Willie re-created that west coast R&B style as if it were 1950 again, including in the set Milburn’s ‘One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer’ and a great reading of Ivory Joe Hunter’s ‘Since I Met You Baby’ with breathy after hours sax from ace tenor man Martin Winnings. Joined again by Mike Sanchez they romped their way through Milburn’s ‘Let’s Have A Party’ closed the show in fine style.

First act we saw on Sunday was local outfit The Stumble, who impressed the early crowd with an energetic set of tough rockin’ blues including a nice version of ‘Give Me Back My Wig’ Boo Boo Davis, on next was excellent, straight-ahead, no frill down-home bluesman, with just guitar and drums backing up his harmonica and gruff vocals. At times Boo Boo’s patter with the crowd was a little hard to make out, due to his strong accent, but he was obviously enjoying himself. On numbers like ‘Fool For Your Love’ and ‘Little Red Rooster’ Boo Boo proved that real down-home blues is still a force to be reckoned with.

Pianist Henry Butler is an eclectic performer and something of an acquired taste. He is an accomplished pianist with touches of barrelhouse, stride, ragtime, free form jazz and classical in his range of styles. Henry is no boogie player, although he attempted it with ‘Let Em Roll’. He was at his most interesting when he played New Orleans style piano on Professor Longhair numbers such as ‘Mardi Gras In New Orleans’,’ Tipitina’ and Chris Kenner’s ‘Something You Got’, but classics like these don’t need flourishes more akin to Liberace. Some of the audience drifted away and encored with ‘Somewhere’ from ‘West Side Story’. He no doubt goes down well in concert halls and those that stuck around certainly enjoyed his show.

There appeared to be general feel about the auditorium that Nick Moss and the Flip Tops was an act that the audience had great expectations of the members of B&R team being no exception to that, so impressive has been the band’s recent releases on the Blue Bella label. Without any hesitation the band launched into a Freddy King styled instrumental as its opening number, following straight on with a nice slow blues., ‘If Your Woman Leaves You’ and then Nick introduced his felloe band members, Willie Oshawny on keyboards, Bob Carter on drums and Gary Hundt on guitar (or at least that’s how they started). Oshawny then led on one number before the lead singer’s armband passed to the talented Hundt, who’d now swapped his guitar for his mandolin, Moss himself having exchanged his guitar for his harp. As B&R had already outlined when reviewing Hundt’s recent album, this band could sound just like a reincarnation of classic early Chicago blues bands such as Snooky Pryor’s or Johnny Young’s: if anything a live version was even better! Hundt’s vocals fronted two superb numbers, ‘Whiskey Makes Me Mean’ and ‘Sitting Here Thinking’, the latter on which he played bottleneck mandolin, something we’d never seen performed before! Oshawny then showed he wasn’t restricted to keyboard work by picking up a bass guitar for ‘Eyesight To The Blind’ and ‘I Wanna Know’, the former of which could be best described, for want of a better description, as a very effective and successful ‘Link Wray’ styled version of the classic. ‘Luckily’ for the audience, MC Chris Powell then appeared to have temporarily AWOL and this allowed two encored, ‘Bad Avenue’ and ‘Rock This House’. An excellent spot from an excellent and obviously multitalented band.

Festival closer was Duke Robillard on his first visit to Burnley, with a solid band that included Doug James, doubling on tenor sax and blues harp, and Bruce Bears on keyboards. Playing for almost two hours, his set ran the gamut of straight-ahead blues including Eddie Boyd’s ‘Bluecoat Man’, solid jazzy numbers (a lovely slow interpretation of ‘I’ll Always Be In Love With You’), swinging R&B including a house-wrecking reading of ‘Honey Hush’’ (with what seemed like the whole house singing the ‘hi yo Silver’ chorus line!) and of course, with the audience calling for it, what else, ‘T-Bone Shuffle’. Duke was in top-notch form and his set was triumphal end to another superb weekend of blues. Will we be back next year? If the line-up’s anywhere near as good as this, you can bet your life on it?

Tony Burke, Dave Clarke, Byron Foulger, Tony Watson and Phil Wight
Blues & Rhythm