Mojo is Working, and we are too

Bonni’s South Side Chronicles 5/16/08:

Hunting more gigs in Chicago, Larry Taylor and I are out hanging around blues clubs again. At Rosa’s Lounge, where Mama Rosa serves drinks for all and is glad to make us some late night coffee, we sat in with one of Larry’s old buddies, Killer Ray Allison. Killer is aptly named. Scorning the wise union standard of playing 45 minutes and taking a break, he sings and wails on the guitar for two or three hours, going through two or three drummers and bass players, never losing his sunny smile. And because Ray doesn’t stick to the same old lump-de-lump blues, but tackles anything from 1950s Chicago blues to smooth R&B ballads and funkadelic madness, adventurous musicians seek him out each Wednesday at Rosa’s. This week we got to play the Temptations’ dreamy “Just my Imagination” and James Brown’s frantic “Get on Up.”

Perched behind the hard-action baby grand piano at Rosa’s, I had no chance to escape before Ray decided to throw down a high-speed version of “Mojo Workin.’” This Muddy Waters classic has a Holiness church-type beat.( Get out your tambourine and go doot, doo-de doot, doo-de doot-- real fast.) “Mojo” is an old southern word for “magic,” as in casting a spell on a person or object of desire: “got my mojo workin’ but it just won’t work on you.”

When the song got going, I don’t know how many crazy beats per minute, Ray nodded at me to play a solo. I couldn’t get in between the beats to play any kind of a melody. I felt like Gilda Radnor in the old factory skit on TV Saturday Night Live, trying to squirt just a tad of whipped cream atop each of the hydrogen bombs that lurched toward me on the conveyor belt. The music piled up, faster and faster. My mojo totally quit working, and I exploded in giggles. Not so amusing if my own audience had been there, expecting me to play something intelligent, but in this Wednesday night jam, Ray was egging everyone to try anything. A jam where the competition is hearty, but mistakes are welcome—what a relief! I threw up my hands and laughed.

“We got to slow Ray down,” Larry said later, quite earnestly. “I tried to sing and couldn’t get the words in.” He worries that his buddy is working himself too hard, but Ray is a natural force, like the winds that blew the rain showers through here last week. Larry resigned himself to the gale force, saying, “That’s ok. When Ray leads the song he’ll do it fast, the way he wants to, but when I get up there I’ll put him to play in the groove with me. You can’t get a groove when you go too fast. Ray and I go way back in this business. He’s helping me work to get my voice in shape for these gigs. This is great practice.”

Both Larry and Killer Ray were drummers for 30 years, playing behind the greatest blues and soul bandleaders. Ray played with Buddy Guy, and was even in a movie once. But fame seldom reaches to the drummer in the back line of a band, Gene Krupa of the swing era being an exception. To make any money in music you have to lead your own band, and that’s what both of them decided to do. Check out their websites:

http://www.myspace.com/killerrayallison

www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com

Ray has invited Larry to be a special guest in his show Saturday at the Wabash Tap , 1233 S. Wabash where one of Koko Taylor’s blues clubs used to be. The Tap will be a base for Saturday’s bus tour of several Chicago blues clubs. I’m sure the tour riders will get more than their money’s worth there with Killer Ray and Larry. Walk-ins are welcome at the Tap too: http://www.chicagobluestour.com/wp/?cat=19

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my mojo back for the Sunday Blues Brunch show, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Junior’s Sports Lounge. Singer Ramblin’ Rose Kelly and I pulled off our first brunch last week, doing some old favorites like Willie Dixon’s “Wang Dang Doodle,” Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights Big City” and “Let’s Get Together.” (Jimmy, they say, was drunk and trying to play on Maxwell Street in the early 1970s when my late blues godmother Johnnie Mae Dunson hauled him away and helped him get dried out. Eddie Taylor, Larry’s dad, played with Jimmy Reed for years.) Also the Peggy Lee jazzy favorite “Fever” which Rose sings very slinkily. Rose, who moved to Chicago from Arkansas as a toddler, started her singing at age 12 in a West Side church choir and has taken her voice around the world since.

Labels: Killer Ray Allison, Larry Taylor, Maxwell Street