27
Jun
2007
I've
read about Nappy Brown's energetic and ribald stage antics when he
was a big star in the 1950s. And having seen him lying on the floor
doing the "bug dance" at the 1993 Mississippi Valley Blues
Festival, I asked him what we should expect of his set with Muddy
Waters alumnus Bob Margolin at the fest this year.
"You can expect everything from me!" he said. "I'm gonna pull off my clothes on the stage. I'm a lemon-squeezing daddy - I have to pull them clothes off. I won't have nothin' on but my shorts!" Nappy laughs with a big, deep-throated guffaw.
"I'm not sure there's an owner's manual to this business that can truly enlighten one," says blues musician Kelly Richey, "but I did know that I was the type of artist that wasn't gonna be happy if I couldn't do it my own way."
"You
got a minute?" Drink Small asked me during our phone interview.
It's
only a slight overstatement to say that blues piano legend Henry Gray
has played with everybody who's anybody.
We
at the IH Mississippi Valley Blues Festival are proud to open the
2007 Tent Stage performances with Memphis' own Robert "Wolfman"
Belfour.
If
you want to hear some of the best, most energetic boogie-woogie and
barrel-house blues piano around, make sure you get to the Fest site
early on Sunday for Doña Oxford. As Blues
Revue says, her work on the
ivories is "stunning."
