The Blackburn-Beach Blues Band: “BBBB” 1995-2000

The BBBB musical maladaption started with my musing with Jim “Fig” Field that “I’d like to play more blues; maybe I should look into getting an alto.” Some time later I got a phone call from him browsing at estate sales at the Minneapolis Armory: “Henry, I’m at a sale where there’s a Buescher Aristocrat silver alto that looks to me in mint condition for $125. Do you want to come down and take a look?”

I replied: “Great, Jim. I wouldn’t want to lose that. Would you just buy it for me now and I’ll get it from you at the next gig.” In fact, it was in perfect shape. Fitted out with another mouthpiece, it sounded just fine!

Mary Leinfelder, local singer who had been hanging out with the Evans-Devore Band Sunday sessions at Chang-OHaras restaurant in St. Paul, also had heard me muse about “learning more blues.” Shortly after I got the alto, she suggested I check out John Beach's solo piano gig at Nikki’s in the Minneapolis warehouse district on Friday nights. She promised, "He knows everything about the local blues scene.”

One sit-in with Beach led to a series, which led to our inviting Dave Faison to join us. He was bassist around town, including the Evans-Devore band and my Creole Jazz group (CD “Creole Jazz Numero Deux” 1982). I made a deal with owner Leo Gadbois to try our new group at Chang's on Saturday eves, and, with further addition of multifaceted drummer, Paul Lagos, we opened in fall ‘94. We soon began to fill the place and were added for Tuesday evenings.

Then Dave Ray, famed local Delta blues performer, decided he wanted to learn some jazz. Faison, Lagos and Beach played anything in any idiom. Dave Ray knew “My Blue Heaven” and lots of blues but few jazz standards and no New Orleans classics. And what he knew was rarely in “horn keys.”

We made some baleful sounds for some time. I sat out, or we modulated in and out of guitar keys when playing blues. We asked Mary Leinfelder to sing a couple of tunes each set. We began to find happy combinations on a few standards such as “How Long Blues” and “It’s Rainin.” Beach was Beach, always with a surprise improvisation, unbelievable phrasing, and funky shouts and keyboarding. Playing two gigs a week, we began to jell, got ourselves a signature piece on “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” and, with the blues big names of Ray and Beach, the sometimes vocalizings of Mary and Blues Man Johnson; with the always-great sit-ins such as Max Ray and Rochelle, the cities’ blues fans began to flock our way! Trad Jazz fans even started coming in.

A big New Year’s Eve gig in the Landmark we landed through Dave Ray; a regular Wednesday evening gig in Gary’s Place way out west in Carver got us a new following. Then a Leigh Kamman live radio show, landed by me, led to a Pioneer Press interview. There came some VFW and Blues Saloon gigs and then Gadbois got ambitious. He developed the Cathedral Hill October Fest where we were billed along with the Evans-Devore-Hall Brothers Band and with popular sit-in guests. That big event flourished for 3 seasons.

Dave Ray’s blues solos and vocals always soared and before long he learned more standards and played more rhythm guitar backing for our jazz. Stacy let me know I was now in the presence of Blues Greatness and told the story of the Beatles cutting their teeth on Koener, Ray, and Glover recordings of Delta blues pre-1964 (two-way fame--by association)! Our program grew with fun tunes and more crowd pleasers.

Still we were not always in the same key and often hit sour notes, but got really “on” with “Women be Wise,” “Winin’ Boy,” “It’s Rainin;” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Person-to-Person,” “Shouda been Me,” “Done Got Over,”“Fightin’ that Jug,” “Holy Cow,” and “Should I.”

This BBBB lasted five years, the prime musical adventure of my ages 70 to 75, when semi-retired from the U of MN. Eventually we laboriously put together a studio recording with everyone involved on the CD “Blues in my Heart” and had its grand release gig at Changs. Our run climaxed with a grand show at the annual Lake Tahoe Jazz Festival in July 1999, the year our Granlibakken Lodge friends, Bill and Norma Parsons, happened to chair its Jazz Committee! It was our grand, almost final event.

Leo Gadbois’s innocent hiring of a young woman manager at Changs, while he tried out a new art-in-leisure retired lifestyle in Mexico. This resulted in an abrupt firing of the BBBB as the new manager sought a younger social set with different musical tastes, but her main and bitter complaint about our gig--instead of hiring a couple more waiters for our packed crowds—was that “every one had to work too hard on Saturdays!”

Leo sold Changs not long thereafter and retired for good. I got on with serious new jobs about the history of my medical field and a new musical life in the Twin Cities with The Creole Four (Tony Balluff and I on reeds, Dave McCurdy on guitar, and Bill Evans on bass: see CDs on this website: “Creole Love Song, Doobooloo, Clarinets Sweet, and Sobbin’ & Cryin.”).

Then came a Florida venture, 1995-2018, with our 1930s cottage on Anna Maria Island where Stacy and I hosted family and friends, and from which we launched each winter a Traditional Jazz Series in the Longboat Key Education Center. The series, led by me and Kid Dutch Uithoven of Florda and our international musical guests, produced live improvised performances before a devoted audience and carried on happily from 2010 through 2018. Covid-19 cooled things down for this aging musicianer!
Henry Blackburn. August, 2021

PS. In Corona Times, the Creole Four plays for fun and friends, in the Twin Cities, outdoors under the trees:

When I Grow too Old to Dream
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh1WtOkHJ58
Sobbin' and Cryin'
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-L9xmOdbo&feature=youtu.be
Creole Love Call with drum solo
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_8_MZlwrU
Old Stack O’ Lee Blues with bass solo
youtu.be/THBmBNui5go