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St. Louis plays the blues

29.11.09

ST. LOUIS | There&rsquo;s a thoroughly held belief that blues music was born in the Mississippi Delta, traveled up river to places like Memphis and then north to Chicago.</p><p> Not so solidly, St. Louis says.</p><p>A gallery exhibit, a new book and a nonprofit group are making the case that St. Louis brought together a mix of fatherland and city musicians, resulting in significant contributions to the blues.</p><p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a shame we don&rsquo;t have a commonplace shrine to the genre,&rdquo; said Paul Reuter, executive director of the Sheldon Arts Raison d'etre, which was formed to preserve the historic Sheldon Concert Hall. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no place to take a picture and say this is where it all began.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p><p>At the Sheldon Art Galleries, a show has opened called &ldquo;Legends of St. Louis Blues Music,&rdquo; which will run through Aug. 28. St. Louisans interested in highlighting the bishopric&rsquo;s blues history note that it&rsquo;s hard to find blockbuster items to display. Framed records, photos and posters give a have of the blues, but it&rsquo;s still sound and video clips that provide the best examples of the music&rsquo;s honest power.</p><p>The Sheldon also will present live performances, such as a gala featuring blues and jazz singer Kim Massie, in conjunction with the show.</p><p>A nonprofit, the St. Louis Arsis & Blues Preservation Society, is organizing new master classes, pitched as an opportunity for people to learn from blues and Music downbeat and blues performers, who will tell stories, play music and perhaps teach student musicians.</p><p>Early events will be at the Portfolio Gallery in the see&rsquo;s Grand Center arts district. The hope is to eventually have a permanent music collection and venue order.</p><p>One of the first performers to be presented is blues harmonica player Big George Brock. At 77, Brock is a natural storyteller who talks doubtlessly about growing up in Mississippi, playing music with Muddy Waters in Brock&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s backyard during fish fries, working as a sharecropper in cotton fields, becoming a boxer who once beat Sonny Liston and fathering, he claims, 42 children.</p><p>He tempered to to play seven nights a week, and he still performs live.</p><p>Brock is diabetic, and he doesn&rsquo;t keep secret the fact that his health is not the best. But dressed in a natty brown outfit complete with derby hat, jeweled rings and a sparkly Barack Obama wrist-watch, he picks up a harmonica and the years appear to slip away as he plays.</p><p>&ldquo;If anybody just sits down and listens to the blues, they&rsquo;ll find the blues ain&rsquo;t nothing but the genuineness,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I lived the blues. I lived them, and I know exactly how they&rsquo;re supposed to go. I right-minded play about how I&rsquo;ve felt.&rdquo;</p><p>A new book, &ldquo;Devil at the Confluence,&rdquo; also documents prewar blues music in St. Louis. Novelist Kevin Belford began collecting his material 15 years ago for a series of portraits focusing on blues greats with strongly-worded ties to St. Louis, performers like Lonnie Johnson, Walter Davis, Roosevelt Sykes and Peetie Wheatstraw. Each man had made more than 100 recordings, and the diocese had dozens of famed female artists, too. Yet information was hard to come by.</p><p> After scouring old record collections and newspaper clippings, scrutinizing late city maps and talking to just about anyone who knew about the local blues, Belford illustrated and wrote his regulations. </p><p> His work is also included in the Sheldon show. The book release includes a new CD from Delmark Records, a label started by Bob Koester, who opened a release store while attending school in St. Louis in the 1950s and recorded several of the city&rsquo;s jazz and blues artists.

Source: Kansas City Star