Memphis is about to get an earful of piano blues - Queen City style.
Three Cincinnati area blues artists, all piano players, are in Memphis this week to compete in what might be called the Super Bowl of Blues. The occasion is the 25th annual
International Blues Challenge Feb. 4-7 where over 100 bands and 60 solo/duo acts, mostly unsigned artists, from 39 states and nine countries will compete for cash prizes totaling over $30,000 and the chance to tour at top blues festivals.
Representing the Greater Cincinnati area in the band category will be
Ricky Nye, performing with his four-piece jazz-tinged blues outfit Ricky Nye Inc. and
Cheryl Renee with Them Bones. Middletown-based piano man
Jimmy D. Rogers competes in the solo/duo category.
It is the first time at the annual Memphis competition the Queen City sound will be represented exclusively by piano players and elegantly carries on the region's rich tradition in the piano genre. All three in the Memphis challenge learned some licks and performed with the three pillars of the Cincinnati piano blues sound: The rugged stylings of Pigmeat Jarrett, the bawdy and flashy H Bomb Ferguson and the boogie woogie grace of Big Joe Duskin (Jarrett passed away in 1995; Ferguson in 2006 and Duskin in 2007).
Nye, a former rock keyboardist with The Raisins in the '80s, was especially influenced by Duskin in the '90s, learning the boogie woogie style from him. Rogers said he learned some lessons, too, hanging out with the Cincinnati legends.
"I got to play with all of them and they were all great people," Rogers said. "I learned restraint from them. I really learned not to hurry into things. Joe especially never got all hyper and intense. He always told me, 'You gotta' slow down. Quit hitting so hard.'"
Local blues followers think it would be especially sweet if this is the year one of the local players wins the prestigious Memphis competition, since they are all symbolic of the region's piano blues tradition. And it would not be farfetched to say these players have a good chance to go far in the competition. All three artists are veteran performers who have competed at the event in the past. Renee was a top-ten finalist several years ago. (Hamilton- based guitarist Sonny Moorman came close to winning two years ago finishing second in Memphis in the solo category).
Rogers thinks it time for a piano player to step forward in a genre that has become increasing dominated by the electric guitar thanks to the contemporary influences of the likes of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
"For the solo division, piano is a great instrument to play. You can do call and responses and all sorts of things," says Rogers. "To pull solo off in guitar you have to be really good. But there are so many resonator guitars, I think judges will be happy to hear anything else."
The three artists won regional Blues Challenges to be selected for the Memphis competition. Ricky Nye Inc. won the Band category at the annual local competition held in the spring by the Cincy Blues Society. The previous year he won the Solo/Duo category and competed in Memphis last year. Since local rules forbid a repeat artist in a category, Nye entered this year with his band configuration.
Rogers, who releases a new CD of original compositions, "Break Even," later this month, won the blues society's solo/duo category. He competed in Memphis in 2002 as a member of Brown Street Breakdown.
Renee's Them Bones took a more circuitous route. The group finished third in the Cincinnati competition last year, but then entered and won the competition sponsored by the Louisville-based
Kentuckiana Blues Society, which allows entries from any group that regularly plays Kentucky. Them Bones plays frequently at Northern Kentucky's Southgate House and Mansion Hill (
The Cincy Blues Society requires entrants be based in the region).
Many think Renee's group has the best shot at winning in Memphis because of her "secret weapon -" Little Al Thomas, perhaps Cincinnati's most acclaimed African American blues guitarist, who is also a fine singer. Thomas' R&B tinged guitar stylings gives the group two lead instruments complementing Renee's more bawdy, free-wheeling piano work.
Any strong finish would cap off a successful homecoming for Renee. Born and raised in Cincinnati, she hit the road at 21, living and playing everywhere from Las Vegas to Boston, and for a while in Tennessee. After 30 years away, she moved back to Cincinnati a few years ago, marrying Keith Little, one of the area's finest blues vocalists.
All three artists are reluctant to call piano blues a trademark Cincinnati sound. If there is regional blues sound, it's more a case of you know when you hear it, rather than being able to describe it.
"I know Joe (Duskin) used to say there is a Cincinnati sound," says Bill Hulsizer, a long time Duskin friend and founder of the Big Joe Duskin Music Education Foundation. "We'd hear songs where he would say, 'That's Cincinnati blues.' He never really explained what he meant."
Musicians of any genre will tell you the Cincinnati sound has a lot to do with Appalachia meeting urban music, forming a singular musical stew.
"It's North meets South. There has always been a twang to music out of here. Cincinnati is certainly one of the largest cities in America where you had that amalgamation," says Rogers. "All my favorite blues songs were covered by country artists. So, I picked blues up listening to country in the '70s as a kid."
"We're a Northern city and a Southern city and our music reflects that," echoes Nye, an Elder grad, with a degree from the Berklee School of Music. "Even our jazz guys, like Cal Collins, had a lot of hillbilly pickin' in their playing. There was Lonnie Mack. He played blues, rock, country. You couldn't pin it down. Toss in King Records with black folks playing on country tunes and the other away around."
As for Memphis, the secret to the competition is to bring your "A" game for less than half an hour. Each band/artist does just three or four songs in a club setting before five judges.
Nye, who has toured extensively in Europe where boogie woogie piano seems more appreciated than in America, admits he wasn't always keen on entering a "battle of the bands" event.
"I had never entered the IBC before just out of philosophical reasons – music should not be a battle. But then I saw the good things that were coming out of this, like they did for Sonny Moorman. I realized we are all musical buddies. There is no gun slinger attitude."
Rogers says ultimately such events are about networking, like any business gathering. In this case, scouts from all over the world will be there representing music labels and blues festivals.
"It's a blues convention," Rogers says, whose "day job" is in the IT department at Miami University. "Blues has been decimated in this century. You got to go to this. It's one of the few things we have left. You just don't have the working blues bands that we did, or the working blues bars. There is no way I could make a living playing blues like I did 25 years ago. No way."
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Photography by Scott BeselerJimmy D. Rogers at the Southgate House in Newport, KYJimmy D. Rogers on keysRicky Nye on piano, provided by Ricky NyeRicky Nye portrait, provided by Ricky NyeCheryl Renee, provided by Cheryl and Them Bones