I'm sometimes called 'Bluesguy'. Oddly, it isn't because I play the blues.
I often don't play the blues - although the blues is large part of my musical language and I often DO play the blues.
I haven't always played the blues. I don't always play the blues now.
And -
I call myself by my given name - Guy.
But...
When I was a teenager, I'd do anything and go anywhere to be close to the music and the (mostly rock) musicians who made the music.
My parents listened to swing and bebop for the most part (Dad later tried Country & Western when we moved to Texas), but I was digging the British Invasion during my early musician years. I dug the Stones, The Beatles, The Animals, The Who, and had no idea that I was listening the blues being rehashed by all of my favorite British rockers.
Dad's favorite songs included Billie Holliday's 'God Bless The Child' and Wynonie Harris' 'Don't Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes At Me'. Dinah Washington's records were amongst my Mom's favorite sing-a-longs, so I guess the blues had a comfortable home base in my head, but I proclaimed myself a rocker, and lived the life through the tiny successes of my teenage rock bands.
One afternoon when I was 16, I got a call from Jim Clinton, one of the older guys who played music (in a great band called The Glass Cans) from my high school, now graduated and a drummer in a popular local band (with a hit record on the radio) named The Magic Ring. Jim told me he would pick me up early for a concert. After picking me up at my parents' home, we picked up an older black man, who he introduced as 'Sam'.
Jim drove me and Sam to the Jewish Community Center for what was billed as a 'Night Of Folk Music'. The performers were to be two I had never heard of, John Lomax & Sam 'Lightning' Hopkins.
That night turned out to be one of those moments one can point to and say -"my life was changed".
John Lomax was a historian and archivist, and his performance was part lecture, part storytelling, and part DJ, as he played tapes made from his travels into the backwoods of America, retold stories he had collected from Native American folklore, sang songs he had recorded from delta negroes, and recited poetry from the Appalachians. He also told his own stories about his travels and adventures while collecting and archiving this American folk art.
Then, Sam got up and sat down to play.
Wow!
He was deep and raw! It was inspiring!
Jim and I were two feet away from, and sitting at the feet of Lightning Hopkins.
We rode with him in Jim's car.
Wow!
The full meaning of my adventure was not clear to me for years. I had no idea how important those guys were to me 'til years later - and that was years after I found out how important they were to the rest of the world.
Like many others, I've spend hours of my life enjoying the music of blues artists who only came to be known through the archival work and recordings of John Lomax, and his son Alan Lomax.
Like many others, I've been influenced by the music and songs of Sam 'Lightning' Hopkins, but with one big difference - I got to know him and play with him!
When Rex (Wrecks) Bell wasn't available, I was one of the guys who got the call to play bass with Sam. This led to other, similar opportunities, too, like getting more phone calls to sub on bass when John Lee Hooker came to town, and then Jimmy Reed.
Living within the rich blues culture in Houston, Texas, USA, I began meeting the most amazing musicians and songwriters. Great bluesmen and blueswomen. Mance Liscomb, Juke Boy Bonner, Albert Collins, Rocky Hill, Jerald Gray, Townes Van Zant, Blaze Foley, Kinney Abair. I got to play with many, party with others, and I wrote about them, too.
I like to write - songs and prose. I'm writing this now, for you...
That's when I got the nickname 'BluesGuy' - As a writer who wrote about blues and blues artists. For years, it had nothing to do with the music. I wrote about the culture, the blues jams, the musicians. I played bass in rock bands, and subbed on bass with blues and country artists, too. I wrote about my adventures. I was 'Bluesguy'.
Of course, the blues is an infectious form - it HAD infected my British-invasion heroes (and me, too) - so I've carried the blues with me through everything else, and many years.
The hiphop kids liked that name, so I became 'BluesGuy' again. When we recorded that great CD with Opie & Kool B, they both insisted that I use the 'Bluesguy' name. If you've never heard that CD, it's pretty cool (two acoustic guitars & poetry) at itunes .
So, I make music under that 'Bluesguy' name now, too. I've done some recording work with Gloria Edwards, Jerald Gray and Little Joe Washington, and contributed music and songs to projects with them and Calvin Owens and Hamilton Loomis.
In 2000, I collected the blues songs from my previous few mixed-genre CDs, and put out my first album containing nothing but blues & R&B songs, and used the 'BluesGuy Schwartz & The New Jack Hippies' name as the artist. Made a new all-blues CD in 2004. They do better than most of my other titles online (except the weed stuff) -probably because it's easier to define when googling with search-words.
I'm working on another blues & R&B album now, as well as a funk-rock CD, a bluesy Americana-style CD, and a CD full of the songs I perform most when it's just me and my acoustic guitar. I've made a lot of albums, with all types of music, and just two of my 40 albums are blues-only studio albums (soon to be three), and a few more are live recordings of blues events.
Those are the ones that say 'BluesGuy'.
