Every so often a person gets a hankering. Maybe for a cheeseburger, medium rare with crispy fries, or a hot fudge Sundae with whipped cream and nuts, or, in this case, a gigantic helping of The Blues. If you happened to get the hankering on Saturday night August 25, you hustled over to The Boston Blues Festival Legends Revival, a banquet of bluesy sound organized by the Blues Trust. Like the Last Supper, the servings of the good stuff came later in the night (in this case, after intermission).
Ten seconds after his black shoes tapped out the beat for “Leave My Woman Alone,” Louisiana Red transformed the musical spirit in the theater from artful imitation to authentic, gritty, gut-felt singing and guitar picking that come from raw talent and personal experience.
Red didn’t need a brass and reed front line to buttress his singing. Delta blues is predominantly guitar and harmonica based. Mouth harp player Lazy Lester (whose act would follow Red’s) and keyboardist David Maxwell would do just fine, thank you.
Red was not mailing his music in. Watching his lanky frame stooped over his guitar and the silver metal sleeve over his finger flash as he slid it up and down the frets, you could almost see him indulging in a ‘whooo, that’s the first time I did it like that’ grin after he heard himself pick through an especially creative improvised riff. This music is his oxygen.
It was “all in” time on stage. Lester and Maxwell dug deep to match Red’s improvisation. We spectators were treated to a jousting match between friendly rivals who weren’t gonna be upstaged.
The primal force of Red’s music, the utter match between his instrument, emotions and words, transported us to the Mississippi Delta of the mid twentieth century.
We were ripped from our sedate emotional moorings and swept into a churning sea, swirling on the transcendent acoustic currents Louisiana Red let loose. This was not just singing. This was catharsis.
The man has jammed with B.B. King, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker but he doesn’t sound like anyone but Iverson Minter, born in 1932, better known as Louisiana Red. You wonder how these Delta blues are in his blood? You wonder why he’s called Germany his home for the past twenty years. His father’s death at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in 1941 and newspaper headlines about persistent race-based problems in his native land might have something to do with it. 
His intro to a song on one of his CDs goes like this: “The blues is a thing one has to feel in his soul, you have to feel it in your heart, you got to live it day by day. You got to feel insults, you got to be throwed out into the streets several times, you got to be put in jail many times before you learn the blues. This little song I learned in prison is called Parole Blues.”
The youngest of authentic, roots-based bluesmen are in their seventies. Seventy -five-year- old Louisiana Red has returned to the US every summer for the past seven years.
If we’re lucky, he’ll be here again next summer. And if you’re lucky, you’ll go listen to him rock the house.
Rising from the ashes
The entire inventory of fifty-two kayaks had been incinerated, melted or disfigured. Spring had arrived. There were paddling classes to teach, kayak programs contracted well into the summer, and the rental season was just underway. And no kayaks.
You couldn’t smell it but the atmosphere was also charged with incredulity, shock, and distress. That’s precisely when nineteen-year-old Osprey Sea Kayak guide Isabel Mattia started creating sparks of her own.
“Two days after the fire, Isabel marched up to me and said, ‘We’ve got to do something to recover. And I’ll take care of it.’” Sam Ladd said Sunday afternoon as she watched more than 200 people stream into the green and white tent pitched near their store at the Head of Westport.
“After the fire, tons of Sam and Carl’s friends kept coming into the store and saying, ‘What can we do to help?’ That’s the effect the Ladds have had on people around here, ” Ms Mattia said.
Within six short weeks, Ms. Mattia channeled the goodwill expressed by the Ladds’ friends and supporters into the August 12th “Re-float the Osprey” fund raiser. With so much energy behind the idea, creating the fund raiser was like paddling downstream with the wind and tide at her back,
The Ladds met Isabel Mattia two years ago at an outdoor program they taught at Milton Academy when Ms. Mattia was a senior. Impressed by her spunk, Sam Ladd invited the Westport teenager to work at Osprey Sea Kayak for the summer.
‘Sam and Carl are like family to me. Sam treats me like a kid sister. They took me under their wings, trained me, and supported my learning. They helped me become the youngest kayak guide in the United States certified by the American Canoe Association last year when I turned 18,” Ms. Mattia said.
With the help of her mother and father and the Ladds’ friends, Mattia organized a Smoke and Pickles dinner, a raffle, live music by Zuma, and a silent auction. Items for the raffle and auction were donated by dozens of local artists, artisans, and businesses. Much of the Smoke and Pickles labor and food costs was donated.
“Tonight’s proceeds will help buy a new fleet of boats. Half of our current inventory is on loan from family, friends, and industry sources,” Sam Ladd said.
“Sam and Carl have brought an environmental consciousness to the Head of Westport. They make converts of many people who’ve never been here or kayaked before,” Ms. Mattia’s mother Rosanne Somerson said.
Her mother’s comment reminded Ms. Mattia of a story that reflects her fondness for the Ladds.
“Two years ago, a very overweight young man came into the store and half jokingly said 'I’ll bet you don’t have a kayak for me.' Without skipping a beat, Carl said ‘Well I think we can get you on the water,’ and he did," Ms. Mattia said, still slightly in awe of the interchange.
"The next year the same fellow, much thinner, came back but no one recognized him until introduced himself. He said that the way Carl nonchalantly took up the challenge to get him on the water motivated him to lose weight."
With stories like that, is it any wonder “Re-float the Osprey” was such a success?
Ms. Mattia enters Brown University this September. It’s a cinch that she won’t have to look far to find summer employment for the next few summers.
August 13, 2007 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)