From: "Doug Bright" <75366.2463@compuserve.com> To: Subject: HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW: May, 2005 Date: Saturday, June 04, 2005 4:04 PM MAY, 2005 HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to e-mail subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach. A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond. Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright 75366.2463@compuserve.com CONTENTS--MAY, 2005 PART TWO: RANDY OXFORD: BLUESMAN IN A CLASS BY HIMSELF WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE CHECKIN, OUT THE SOUNDS: MAY PERFORMANCE CALENDAR (next message) ---------------------------------------- PART TWO: RANDY OXFORD: BLUESMAN IN A CLASS BY HIMSELF BY DOUG BRIGHT Summary of Part One: When one thinks of award-winning instrumentalists in the rhythm-and-blues realm, the trombone is definitely not the first instrument that comes to mind. That makes Randy Oxford the proverbial "big frog" in the very small pond of blues-based trombonists, having chalked up seventeen awards from the Washington Blues Society in various categories over the course of his career. The Randy Oxford Band won the Best New Band citation for 2003, and its subsequent debut CD, ALL THE BUZZ, is sure to generate even more accolades. Born in 1960 in Seattle's Ballard district, Oxford heard a wide range of music from his parents' record collection during his formative years, and when he moved with his family to Chicago at age eleven, the listening opportunities only increased. As a result of seeing a production of "The Music Man" with his parents, Oxford discovered his lifelong instrument and took it up during his sixth-grade school year. Unfortunately, however, his student experience wasn't all smooth sailing. After enduring a junior-high band director with a negative personality for three years, he nearly quit playing altogether. Nevertheless, Oxford found the inspiration that kept him going in the person of his high school band director, Steve Hoernamann, and the results were obvious and impressive. In 1977 the school's 200-piece marching band won first place in a national competition, giving Oxford the experience of playing the next Orange Bowl parade. In addition to the concert band and marching band, Hoernamann also ran a tight, jazz-oriented stage band, where Oxford gained his most relevant experience. Upon graduation, Oxford was encouraged by his father to try out for the Army Band, and after passing a rigorous audition that required sightreading a wide variety of unfamiliar sheet music, he was accepted to fill a spot for a trombone player in Europe. Assigned to Berlin, Oxford gained priceless experience in many countries and settings, playing to military and civilian audiences alike. "We had an Army group called The Ambassadors of Jazz that played American big-band swing all over Europe," he explains, "and the Europeans just went crazy for it! I found out that many of the old-school Big Band musicians were living in Berlin. I met Al Porcino, the legendary trumpet player from the Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and Buddy Rich bands, and he asked me to join his big band. This was the ultimate school of music for me." In 1981 Oxford returned home to the States, transferring to fill a trombone spot in the band stationed at Fort Ord, California, near Monterey. Once there, he lost no time in connecting with the local music scene. He worked with many groups, including the swing-oriented Monterey Peninsula Big Band, but his most influential experience came from a three-year stint with the Broadway Blues Band, a Santa Cruz ensemble whose instrumentation included a Hammond B-3 organ and a three-piece horn section. "This is the band that really got me started on the blues," he explains. After finishing his military service in 1984 and managing Domino's Pizza franchises in the Bay area for a couple of years, Oxford moved north to work with his parents, who had come back to western Washington and opened a printing supply business in Redmond. As a result of attending a blues jam at Seattle's now-defunct Owl Caf`e, he hooked up with a band called ,duo Glide led by guitarist Mark Whitman. This led to an affiliation with the immensely popular roots-rock band Jr. Cadillac, with whom he made a twentieth anniversary cassette album recorded live at the Seattle ,sheraton in 1988. Early the following year Oxford played a 50th birthday celebration honoring Northwest rock-and-roll legend Little Bill Engelhart, and Engelhart was so impressed with Oxford's playing that he invited him to join his band. Sixteen years later, Oxford still views the eight years spent with Little Bill and The Bluenotes as his most important learning experience. After leaving the Bluenotes in 1997, Oxford hooked up with Fat Cat, a horn-driven blues crew with plenty of original material, and with his help, the group took the Washington Blues Society's 1998 award for New Band of The Year. Later in '98 he joined the eclectically styled "swampabilly blues" act Junkyard Jane. During Oxford's three-year tenure the band made three CD's, achieved great local popularity, and placed as one of the top eight entries in a national Battle of The Bands competition in Memphis. After leaving Junkyard Jane in 2001, Oxford decided to take what he had learned about the music business and turn it into an enterprise that would help to build and strengthen the local blues community. Beginning at Jake's Ales in Federal Way, he started hosting weekly jam sessions at appropriate venues in the Puget Sound area. "I wanted to help musicians hook up and find bands and gigs," he explains, "so I started hosting blues jam sessions and started my own booking agency, Oxford Entertainment. Now I can help bands form and find new players from the blues jams that I host. Then I can help them find gigs through my booking agency." ---------------------------------------- One of the happiest results of Oxford's jam sessions has been the discovery of the personnel for his Randy Oxford Band. Guitarist Steve Blood, a Tacoma native, plays the kind of classic blues slide that's scarcely been heard since Jeremy Spencer graced the original Fleetwood Mac. Bassist Jack Kinney, originally from southern California, had toured with such legendary rockers as the Ventures, the Coasters, and the Isley Brothers before settling in the Northwest and joining Oxford. Singer/guitarist Jerry Lee Davidson left his native Seattle as a musically restless teenager in the early 1970's to try his luck in Chicago's thriving folk and blues circles, and since then he's worked with a pantheon of artists ranging from Willie Dixon to Willie Nelson to Chuck Berry. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Virginia Klemens also made her mark on the Chicago music scene at a young age and has fronted her own bands as well as working with a wide variety of artists, including Doc Watson, Maria Muldaur, and bluesman Homesick James. With the discovery of drummer/vocalist Riky Hudson, a Little Rock, Arkansas native with a diverse musical background, the band was complete. The Randy Oxford Band's debut CD, recorded at a Whidbey Island studio called Blue Ewe and released last year, is a masterful integration of tradition and creativity. Entitled ALL THE BUZZ, it spans an uncommonly wide range of eras and sources. Virginia Klemens updates Memphis Minnie's 1929 hit "Bumble Bee" to an infectious shuffle, with Oxford's spicy trombone and the two lead guitarists, Blood and Davidson, working up to a well maneuvered three-way jam. Bessie Smith's "Sugar In My Bowl" and the Depression-era classic "Why Don't You Do Right", also delivered by Klemens, are backed with the kind of insistent four-beat chord rhythm that characterized the neo-Vaudevillian efforts of the Beatles and Spoonful in the late Sixties. From the heyday of Chicago blues come two Sonny Boy Williamson numbers. The band turns "Crazy 'Bout You" into a swaggering mid-Sixties rocker with a simple but effective overdubbed trombone horn-section riff that calls the Stones' "Satisfaction" to mind. On "Help Me", the band's superb command of dynamics is especially obvious. The volume dips to a whisper to emphasize Klemens' voice on key verses, but it expands to a controlled roar when Oxford dexterously shares choruses with the lead guitarists. On James Brown's "Think", Oxford and one of the guitarists replicate the original saxophone riff, and Virginia Klemens' tastefully gritty rendition is supported with satisfying vocal harmony from the band. Billy Edd Wheeler's "High Flying Bird" is sure to catch the attention of folk revivalists who remember Judy Henske's haunting rendition. Although Klemens' delivery has a somewhat lower grit factor, it's just as soulful. "Peach", written by that consummate bluesman Prince, becomes another swaggering mid-Sixties blues-rocker in the hands of the Randy Oxford Band as led by vocalist Riky Hudson. As this disc eloquently demonstrates, Oxford's band can come up with original songs as compelling as the material it gleans from historical sources. "Texas Hurricane", for example, is a slow-grinding blues co-written by Jerry Lee Davidson and sung in an effective duet with Virginia Klemens. "Moscow Blues" celebrates American life and liberty from the perspective of a Russian immigrant. "I was born in Moscow in 1953," the character proclaims, "but now I live in New York City, the home of the brave and the land of the free." "Jerry Lee Davidson wrote this song straight out of his imagination," the album's liner notes explain, "despite the rumors that Randy brought him to this country and is forcing him to play in a blues band." The single most impressive thing about the Randy Oxford Band is its highly developed sense of teamwork, especially given its unusual instrumentation. While the bass and drums lay a solid foundation, Oxford and the three guitarists blend seamlessly to provide perfect support for vocal and instrumental soloists alike. For his part, Randy Oxford utilizes the trombone's full range of tonal possibilities on this disc, riffing convincingly with the guitarists and taking solos that reflect the heat and spice of New Orleans or the cool of the Tommy Dorsey era as the situation requires. Given the level of musicianship and blues community activism that characterizes Randy Oxford and his band, it's no surprise that their groundbreaking debut CD is getting the notice it deserves. Consequently, the nominations for the Washington Blues Society's Best of Blues (BB) awards are pouring in. The disc is nominated for Best Blues Recording, and Virginia Klemens is up for Best Female Singer. Oxford, for his own part, is in the running for four awards this year: Best Horn Player, Performer of the Year, Lifetime Achievement, and Keeping The Blues Alive. By the time you read this, of course, the winners will have been decided. The Randy Oxford Band CD, ALL THE BUZZ, can be ordered from Oxford's website, www.randyoxford.com, or by mail for $17, which includes shipping and handling, from Randy Oxford, Oxford Entertainment, P.O. Box 232, Eatonville, WA 98328. ---------------------------------------- WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL MARKETPLACE Jump-blues Classics On CD At Bop Street Bop Street Records has long been the place to go for vintage vinyl and collectable CD'S in Seattle's Ballard district. The news this month, according to proprietor Dave Voorhies, is the arrival of a large selection of jump blues from the Forties and early Fifties reissued on the respected French label Classics. Artists include Muddy Waters, Joe Liggins, Jimmy Liggins, and Ray Charles--his earliest recordings in a style emulating Nat King Cole. Bop Street Records 5219 Ballard Avenue Northwest. Phone: (206) 297-2232. E-mail: dave_vorhees@yahoo.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Veteran Banjoist Offers Bluegrass Instruction Longtime Seattle banjoist Bill Scott, who performs with The Fossils and The Coots, is now making his knowledge of the Earl Scruggs and Don Reno techniques available to students at all levels of proficiency. His business card proclaims, "Forty years of playing experience." "I want to get the point across that I'm not a novice," he explains. He can be reached by e-mail at banjofivebyeight@yahoo.com. ---------------------------------------- ON THE NEWSSTAND: HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW The print edition of HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW is available by mail for $15 per year and on sale at the following Seattle newsstands and music venues: DOWNTOWN: M. Coy Books and Espresso: 117 Pine Street. Read-all-about-it: First and Pike, Pike Place Market. FREMONT: American Music 4450 Fremont Avenue North. Dusty Strings: 3406 Fremont Avenue North. Fremont News: 3416 Fremont Avenue North. PIONEER SQUARE: New Orleans Creole Restaurant: 114 First Avenue South. Elliott Bay Book Company: 101 South Main Street. Bud's Jazz Records: 102 South Jackson Street. Emerald City Guitars: 83 South Washington Street. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forwarding of this Electronic Edition is strongly encouraged. If you received this issue by means of a forward and wish to subscribe, simply send your request to editor Doug Bright: editor@heritagemusicreview.com. ----------------------------------------