UNMASKED FLAVORS
LAST FRIDAY at Philharmonic Hall was given over to “an evening of blues variations” presented by New Audiences, who have been putting together intriguing folk and jazz evenings for the past few months. Friday’s show began with WNEW-FM morning jock Dave Herman asking the assembled largely-white multitudes to fill out questionnaires detailing their preferences in future shows.
The first group of the evening was John Lee Hooker’s backup band, the Dave Chester Quartet, who got an enthusiastic reception for their one number before Hooker himself came on, hung his coat on the back of his chair, sat down with his electric guitar, and ripped off a few solo blues runs. “Y’wanna boogie with the Hook?” he asked the crowd, and they roared approval. “Well, we’ll get to that later,” though he never quite did, and he launched into ‘Serve You Right to Suffer’, which everyone must have recognized from the J. Geils Band version, because it went down to an accompaniment of scattered screams and shouts of “boogie!” just like the grimier concerts downtown. It should be noted that the recordings that established Hooker as a major blues artist were cut solo, to give his extremely personal and jagged sense of rhythm full play. The all-Caucasian Chester group was not following him particularly well, and several times he had to cue them with dramatic arm movements to end numbers. After a few more rather uninspired songs, he put the guitar down and just sang and wiggled his pelvis around the stage, Sly Stone style, shouting “do the boogie, baby,” as the band played on.
After a brief break the stage was set for songwriter/stylist Mose Allison, who was ably backed by bassist Charlie Haden (who evidently had many of his own fans in the hall) and drummer Paul Motian from fellow-pianist Keith Jarrett’s quartet. He began his set with an overlong Bill Evans/impressionistic instrumental, but when he started singing his pianistic approach became more what he’s known for, with mellow performances of several of his better-known blues. Particularly good were his treatments of ‘Parchman Farm’ and Duke Ellington’s humorous’ ‘Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues’, and his encore of ‘The Seventh Son’.
After a drinking thinking time, the Muddy Waters band took the stage for an instrumental introduction, Dave Herman announced “now, the King of the blues,” and Muddy, in a gray suit and resplendent black patent-leather Gucci shoes with gold trim, took the stage with his guitar, and the band moved into Leroy Carr’s ancient classic ‘Blues Before Sunrise’, set off by a rousing harp solo by George “Mojo” Buford. Muddy wasn’t playing much guitar, but he was singing quite well. Waters, although he has been involved with music even longer than Hooker and has almost as many records out (although his best efforts are on Chess), is still involved in his music. He played fine bottleneck on Willie Dixon’s stomper ‘Hootchie Cootchie Man’ and the real down in the alley blues ‘Long Distance Call’, in which he even picked a couple of notes with his teeth, trading stinging phrases with his pianist, Joe “Pinetop” Perkins. He ended his set with his usual crowd pleaser ‘Got My Mojo Working’, which had the crowd shouting back the chorus lines. Muddy even danced a bit with his patented feet, and ended to a standing ovation that didn’t let up until he came back to finish the song, and he even returned again to sing another down-home cooker, Eddie Boyd’s steelyard classic ‘Five Long Years’.
Outside the Green Room, the card-sharps were already gathered (one of Muddy’s favorite diversions on the road is card tricks, both doing them and seeing them done), but by the time we got there Muddy and the band had already split back to their hotel — or maybe were even on their way back to Chicago.
© Dan Nooger, The Village Voice, 11 January 1973