Fort Worth Weekly - News, Entertainment, Restaurants, Music

As they are every Monday, bassist Cadillac Johnson, drummer Gonzalo “Gonzy” Trevino, and guitarist Hash Brown were at the downtown bar and restaurant, holding a steady shuffle and pumping out those once-in-a-lifetime guitar solos. Guitarist Drue Webber, just shy of his 30th birthday, was the youngest muso in the place.

As Webber was putting away his guitar afterward, a woman walked up to him and said she heard the music from the street. “It was like she’d been in the desert without water,” he said. “She wanted to know where the good blues had gone. She needed a hospital visit to take care of her need for the blues.”

A lot of other blues fans in town probably feel the same way. The Fort Worth scene these days isn’t actually a desert, despite the recent news that there would be no more regular shows at J&J Blues Bar, one of the oldest and most popular blues clubs in not just Fort Worth but all of North Texas. But, like many across the country, Fort Worth’s blues scene has dried up considerably in recent years. From the late 1940s through the ’90s, it was a truly special thing. A handful of internationally acclaimed players called Fort Worth home. T-Bone Walker, Cornell Dupree, Ray Sharpe, and several other artists and their backing bands spawned a distinct sound: The Fort Worth Shuffle, a lazy, Texas-styled beat found here and only here. (Think: the ching-ching-ching-bop-budda-bing of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Texas Flood” but lazier.) And many internationally known players such as Bobby “Blue” Bland, Jimmy Reed, and Howlin’ Wolf regularly played here.

Though “JJ’s,” as the place was affectionately known, is gone, Mambo’s, Keys Lounge, and, in Arlington, Stumpy’s Blues Bar still carry on, offering solid live blues most nights of the week. Other venues rotate blues with rock and country. Still, the fact is, blues music is almost an afterthought here. Musicians and fans in other cities may accept that outcome as inevitable. But in Fort Worth, the tradition is too rich to be allowed to die quietly.

Some of them wonder how much longer there will be enough bluesicians in town to keep up that musical conversation, one that has sustained them and their kind for so long. It’s a real challenge to find blues on area radio –– only KNON/89.3-FM and KKDA/730-AM play blues and, even then, only occasionally. Local media typically ignore blues artists and events, and most young players gravitate toward rock, country, rap, or Americana, sexy genres with wide appeal. Listeners spend much less money on music these days, which is true for every genre, but especially harmful for an already struggling art form like the blues.

It’s a worrisome time for folks like guitarist John Zaskoda, who has always wanted to play the blues. Instead, his band, JZ & Dirty Pool, offers a mixed bag of blues, country, and rock, and it still doesn’t pay the bills. So last year he signed up to play lead guitar in the band of wildly popular mainstream country artist Casey Donahew. “It was just a job,” though, Zaskoda said. “As a guy who has been dedicated to the blues art, there is nothing more rewarding other than my passion.”

Blues music was born in the Deep South sometime in the 1800s, started by slaves who had little more than guitars and voices to express themselves artistically. Several decades later, the wistful ballads and hymns buoyed by remnants of African rhythms created a new era in American music. During the ’40s, the blues spread rapidly throughout the South, catering primarily to black audiences. Here in Fort Worth, a pool of talented horn and guitar players entertained crowds of listeners in local black clubs and gatherings.

Fort Worth’s blues roots date back to the late 1930s, when a club opened up in Como, a Westside neighborhood created by wealthy whites to provide nearby housing for their servants. The Blue Bird would serve as one of the main anchors of local blues for more than 60 years. Its first incarnation was extremely modest. “It was just two railroad cars joined together into an L shape,” said Sumter Bruton, a guitarist and owner of Record Town on University Drive –– and also the pre-eminent expert on Fort Worth blues. “They kept adding on to it.”

By the 1950s, many other blues clubs had opened and closed around town, places like Zanzibar, Barney’s Missile Club, and Jim Hotel. All were patronized by mostly multiracial audiences. The Blue Bird and a black mosque on the near South Side hosted numerous blues acts, as did TJ’s Famous Chicken and its neighbor, The Silver Dollar, both on East 4th Street just south of downtown. “The ’50s and into the ’60s were really the heyday,” Bruton said. “Black musicians were working, and all the frat parties had bands. It was a mixed crowd all the way.”

In the ’50s, traditional blues, which adapted left-hand piano rhythms onto a guitar, was the rage among music listeners. People all over town wanted to hear it, even if they didn’t all end up at the same venues. “It was chancy to go to the black clubs in the early ’60s,” Bruton said. “The voting rights act hadn’t happened yet, but after that, no problem. The Blue Bird was half white and half black; everyone from debutantes to hardcore Como people.”

Fort Worth was fortunate in its blues heritage. It can claim famous blues guitarists like Walker, who lived here for a stretch; Sharpe, who wrote the popular song “Linda Lu”; and Dupree, who played with many famous artists, including Aretha Franklin and King Curtis. Everyone, it seemed, loved and listened to live blues in the late ’60s and early ’70s, including Bruton, who could identify blues artists before he could read. Local artists such as Robert Ealey, U.P. Wilson, Freddie Cisneros, Ray Reed, Pearl “Lady Pearl” Johnson, Ray Flangin, Reverend Filmore, and others were flourishing.

After that, for the first time since its initial popularity, blues disappeared from America’s public eye, as British rock sounds took over airwaves.

In actuality, the British rockers had taken American blues and made it into their own music. As teenagers, Britons like John Lennon and Eric Clapton devoured American blues records. The genre’s progressions and rhythms influenced a new brand of music that included the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and The Beatles. When they exported their music across the Atlantic Ocean to the states, people called it the British Invasion, and its new fans had little idea how the blues had evolved into something they called rock ’n’ roll.