070701 George Thorogood/Dr. John/John Hammond, Ottawa, ON

Back in 2001 the Ottawa Bluesfest was in their third and final season at the old, pre-reno LeBreton Flats, when the site was actually flat.  And dusty.

This was a year after Sting had played Bluesfest, which is (I believe) when the first major cries of “It’s not a blues festival anymore,” started.  I hate that kind of talk and it’s only gotten worse (if more justified) over the years, but you sure couldn’t say that about July 7th, when I spent my first day of Bluesfest 2001 standing in the unlandscaped, nondescript field along the Ottawa River taking in back-to-back sets from John Hammond, Dr. John, and George Thorogood.

Talk about blues!

Okay, they are three white guys, but still.  

Among the Caucasian race John Hammond has got to be the elder statesman of the Delta Blues.  His thumbpick and glass slide pound out a relentless rhythm behind howling vocal antiphony, utterly devoid of the twelve-bar form that restricts modern blues, just like the original blues men and women that John Hammond spent a lifetime studying and seeking out did.  

Then of course there is Dr. John, who is unquestionably the heavyweight champion of New Orleans blues, jazz, and boogie-woogie*.  I remember snippets from his set like photographs in my mind; I can see him sitting up there at his keyboard on stage right, leading the band through a one swampy rocker after another looking every bit like his Muppet-persona, the venerable Dr. Teeth.

And finally, George Thorogood.  Part cultural appropriator, part open-G slide gorilla, and all sweaty, beer-drinking rock and roller, few white men since Elvis Presley can claim to have brought as much blues music to the youth of white North America.  One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer, Who Do You Love?, Madison Blues, Willie And The Hand Jive, Crawlin’ King Snake…I’d say a majority of people in my generation heard a lot of those songs from George Thorogood first, though they were written by Rudy Toombs, Bo Diddley, Elmore James, Johnny Otis, and John Lee Hooker respectively.

I can’t recall all these years later if Thorogood played all of these songs but I bet he did, and probably a whole bunch of old blues songs I’m not thinking about as well.  But of course he threw in a lot of his own down-and-dirty grinders as well, each of which could easily be argued straight into the blues bin.  

So like I say, the evening was a pretty blues-y start to the Bluesfest.  For me, that is.  I had skipped the opening day of the festival, which had been headlined by Blue Rodeo, not one of my faves.  And though Blue Rodeo is certainly not a blues band in any way, shape or form, they obviously feature the word “blue” very prominently in their moniker, so there’s that.

*Gosh, I wish the term “boogie-woogie” was still in regular usage.  What a fun phrase to say and to hear.  “Boogie-woogie.”  Try it out loud: “Boogie-woogie.”