items tagged with Mississippi Valley Blues Festival

While listening to Kelley Hunt perform – the singer/songwriter’s joyously smoky, soulful blues vocals a perfect match for her funky and fiery piano skills – it’s easy to imagine that the Kansas-based musician never lacked for confidence. As she admits during our recent phone interview, though, she actually did. She just didn’t tell anyone.

“When I was about 17, I was in a band with my brother’s friends, and these were older guys – like 21 or whatever,” says Hunt with a laugh. “I wasn’t singing at all; I was just playing these keyboards that they had. And one night we were playing for an event at the college in Emporia, where I grew up, and we were being paid, and the gal that was supposed to sing just did not show up. And it was time to start, and the guys looked at me and just said, ‘Oh my God, we hope you can sing.’

“I was pretty much horrified,” she continues. “I mean, I knew I could, because I was doing it in school, but never in this kind of setting. So at that moment, I just made a conscious decision: ‘I’m going to pretend like I’m all about this, and I’m going to pretend like I’m not scared out of my gourd.’ And I just slammed it out for a couple hours, and I remember thinking, ‘Well, (a) nobody here even knows there’s anything different, (b) the singer’s fired, and (c) I now get paid twice as much.’”

Laughing, Hunt says, “I just stepped into it brazenly and naïvely, and just assumed that it would all work out.”

Preston Shannon was working and performing in Memphis during the 1960s and ’70s, when “Soulsville USA” rivaled Detroit’s Motown. Stax Records ruled the airwaves with Booker T & the MGs laying down the backing “Memphis Soul Stew” for hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett, while over at Hi Records producer and songwriter Willie Mitchell was working with Al Green and Otis Clay. It was a magic time. You can hear those soul influences in Preston Shannon’s music, but he doesn’t acknowledge the soul connection.

“I am really a blues man,” Shannon declared in a recent phone interview. “I know the blues, I’ve experienced the blues, I play the blues. You know, when I recorded all my CDs, the reason I inserted R&B ... was because at the time it was so hard to get airplay for the blues.”

Lady Bianca. Her very name suggests confidence and brio and more than a hint of glamor, qualities that are readily apparent in the artist’s soulful, soaring renderings of blues originals and covers, and that led Blues Revue magazine to call her “a great talent whose hearty, refreshing approach tugs at the heart while moving the feet.” (For a quick, thrilling introduction to Lady Bianca’s gifts, check out her performances of “Ooh, His Love Is So Good” – from her 1995 debut album Best Kept Secret – and Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” both viewable on YouTube.)

So when you learn that Lady Bianca (born Bianca Thornton) was given her stage moniker at age 17 – a name bestowed on her by the noted San Francisco-based bluesman Quinn Harris, for whom she sang backup – you might think that even then she boasted the electrifying magnetism and blues-fueled assurance that she does now at age 58.

“Oh, no,” she says, with a laugh, during our recent phone interview. “Quinn Harris named me Lady Bianca because I was so square.”

Matthew Curry & the Fury, 6:30 p.m.

The party starts here! Matthew Curry is a teenage phenom from Normal, Illinois, who plays guitar, writes songs, and sings. He is backed by the Fury – veteran performers Greg Neville on drums and Jeff Paxton on bass.

In 2011, Matthew was awarded second place (first was taken by a Tommy Castro collaboration) in the International Songwriting Competition for his composition “Blinded by the Darkness,” a slow, Chicago-sounding blues that features his Clapton-like guitar melodies. The song is included on the 2011 debut CD for Matthew Curry & the Fury, If I Don’t Got You.

Earnest “Guitar” Roy, 6:30 p.m.

Earnest Roy Jr. was born on September 25, 1958, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, under the watchful eye of his father, guitarist Earnest Roy Sr., who worked with Jackie Brinston, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker, Wade Walton, Raymond Hill, and many of the other Clarksdale bluesmen. Earnest’s father taught him bass guitar at five, and when Earnest turned eight, he began playing in his father’s band, Earnest Roy & the Clarksdale Rockers, whose members included Big Jack Johnson. At age 11, Earnest Jr. began playing lead guitar, and he formed his first band at 14, which led to his being regular performer on Soul Train.