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Robert Ealey at the 2000 Bedford Blues Festival.

Conventional wisdom is that only older blacks listen to the kind of soul blues that Lady Pearl puts out. And yet her appreciative audience covers the age spectrum, from young people who teethed on hip-hop all the way to their grandparents, who might have seen Jimmy Reed or Howlin' Wolf at the Skyline Ballroom 40 years ago.

Never heard of the Swing Club? Unless you're black, that's no surprise.

Time was, in Fort Worth, blues buffs of all races and stripes hung together, at least for a few hours a week, at Robert Ealey's New Bluebird Nite Club at the corner of Horne and Wellesley in Como. That was 30 years ago, however, before a murder (or was it just changing times?) ended the Bluebird's reign, and an automobile accident and illness brought Ealey himself down. Conventional wisdom -- or, at least, mainstream, alternative, and even local blues press -- also holds that, these days, the blues in Fort Worth are white blues, played at places like J&J's Blues Bar, the Black Dog Tavern, and the Captain's Den.

Once again, the conventional wisdom should sit down and shut up. On any given weekend in Fort Worth, black blues bands and singers may be flying under the radar, but they're still flying. Performers like Lady Pearl, Sang'N Clarence, and Vernon Garrett are throwing down in places like the Swing Club, B&B's Blues Room on South Riverside, and the Guys and Dolls Ballroom on Southway Circle, near the junction of I-20 and I-35W, which features some of the larger soul blues shows. (Don O., KNON-FM/89.3's blues format director and host, calls it "sort of the J&J of the soul blues scene.") Or maybe Little Jimmy is on stage, or Sir Charles Jones, or Big Jack & the Conspiracy Band (that's the former Johnnie Taylor's Taylor Made Orchestra, to those not in the know.) This Saturday, for instance, Guys and Dolls will showcase Sheba Potts and Dr. Love, while the B&B is presenting former child prodigy Lucky Peterson, who's been recording since the '60s -- quite a coup for that little Fort Worth club.

There's no denying, however, that blues in the predominantly black parts of Fort Worth have been on the wane for at least the last decade. And some think there are signs that, once again, a more racially integrated blues scene may be coming together.

"Part of the problem," says Sumter Bruton, probably the best-known of a number of white blues musicians who played with black bands in the late 1960s and early '70s, "is that blues in general isn't very popular right now. It always goes in cycles. Maybe you just have to wait another five or 10 years for another crop of white kids who dig blues or who just like being able to hang out with the black folk and still go home to come along."

Fort Worth has been at least a whistlestop on the blues train since the mid-'30s, when pioneering Oak Cliff guitarist T-Bone Walker fronted the house band at Fort Worth's Jim Hotel. Fort Worth's best-known bluesman, the late Robert Ealey, was born in Texarkana and blew into town in the late 1940s, reputedly as a drummer with Houston-based singer-guitarist Lightnin' Hopkins.

In the late 1950s, Ealey drummed in the Boogie Chillun Boys while Louisiana-born Huary (U.P.) Wilson and a local lad, Cornell Dupree, shared guitar duties. A decade later, Dupree would gain fame playing smooth soul with saxophonist King Curtis, who started his career in Fort Worth playing jump blues. Wilson belatedly began a recording career in the late 1980s, developed a strong following in Europe, and recently relocated to France.

In 1959, Ray Sharpe, a singer-guitarist who mixed his blues with country tunes to cross over to white Fort Worth audiences, had a sizable national hit with "Linda Lu," a song that's still a blues-jam staple today. A King Curtis-produced 1966 remake of "Linda Lu" had Curtis' former sideman Jimi Hendrix, then poised for global psychedelic success, doing the six-string honors.

From the 1960s through the late '90s, Evans Avenue was home to dozens of blues clubs -- and Lady Pearl played almost all of them.

"I'm a dirty old woman, with a real dirty mind" she belts out. Like many other powerful singers who have moved on to less-religious topics, Lady Pearl and her brother Ray Reed started out singing in church --Cannon Baptist Church, in their case -- as youngsters, "but we used to travel around singing in all different churches," she said. "It was almost like having a gig." They branched out into performing blues in the mid-1960s.

At first, she only played blues guitar. "When I was a little girl, I used to love Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, people like that," she said, sitting in her cozy house near the Swing Club, surrounded by instruments, records, videos, and memorabilia. "My uncle Bob Parramore was the one who gave us our first electric guitar. He had bought one, because he played, too. We'd borrow it on Friday, bring it back Sunday, then we'd come right back Tuesday, maybe Monday, and get it. Last time we went to borrow it, he said, 'Y'all just keep it, and whenever I need it, I'll come borrow it.' He never did come get it."

After Lady Pearl and Ray were grown, "My brother told him, 'You're the one that gave us our first start, so this is for you,' and he gave him an electric guitar."

Her first band experience came because of her brother's popularity. Someone came looking for him to play, but Ray had already left for another gig. Pearl was sitting there practicing her guitar, so she got asked to take his place.

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