Guys like Kirk "Eli" Fletcher shouldn't be rare and unusual in the blues, but as most blues fans already know, they are. Kirk is a young African-American man who has embraced and thoroughly immersed himself in the music of his parents, and grandparents: the blues sounds of the 1950s and '60s. Inspired by B.B. King's "Live At The Regal", his investigation of the blues began, and like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, he has been picking up speed and mass ever since.
And he's young, VERY young by blues standards - he's still in his 20s. Robert Lockwood, Jr. has been eligible for Social Security retirement checks almost as long as Kirk has been on this earth. At a time when most of those playing traditional blues are on the far side of the retirement fence, it's only been in the last few years that Kirk has only been old enough to buy himself a beer in most of the clubs he plays. And he probably still gets asked for identification.
Yet close your eyes, and you're there. It's the sound of blues as it was played when giants like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf and T-Bone Walker and Little Walter still towered over the blues landscape. Kirk not only "gets it", he's got it, that hard-to-define thing that makes each note and every phrase he plays on his guitar come out just right, so that it all sound exactly like the blues and nothing else.
Like most blues players who have come along in the last half-century or so, Kirk didn't learn the blues sitting at the feet of the masters, or making a deal with the devil at the crossroads - he learned in the CD age by listening to reissues of vintage recordings. But while the ways the people learn the blues may have changed over the years, the foundation hasn't; as the son of a Baptist minister, he began absorbing the rhythms and phrases that lie at his father's church. His blues indoctrination started out like many young players, first with contemporary sounds, then hearing something in it that led him back a generation. And once there, finding something else that led back yet another generation, another layer deeper, another obscure recording further into the web of blues. Picking up the finer points at every step along the way, mixing and matching and coming up with something that comes out sounding fresh and exciting, while unmistakably and undeniably 100% blues.
In Kirk's relatively short time playing music, he's made some big waves and impressed a lot of the right people. Coming up through the ranks of the West Coast blues scene, he's spent valuable time with Al Blake (former frontman of the legendary Hollywood Fats Band), Richard "Lynwood Slim" Duran, and Junior Watson among others. Eventually he was hand-picked for Kim Wilson's Blues Revue, the modern day equivalent of joining, say, Muddy Waters' band in the 1950s. From there he was recruited for veteran harp man Charlie Musselwhite's band. Kirk had arrived. Yet up to that point he hadn't led his own band. That soon changed, when with help from Wilson, Blake and Duran among others, he recorded a CD for England's JSP label in 1999.
Blues Producer and Promoter Randy Chortkoff (a talented harp player and bandleader in his own right) became aware of Fletcher's talents through his association with Kim Wilson. Chortkoff has played a role in a number of high-profile blues careers - among them Billy Boy Arnold, Jody Williams, the late King Ernest, and Finis Tasby, and his instincts have seldom let him down. After working with Fletcher on a number of live projects, Chortkoff put his money where his mouth was, and decided to produce a recording that fully showcased Fletcher's many talents...the recording you're probably listening to right now. He pulled together the hottest and most experienced West Coast blues veterans to provide support, and began a series of recording sessions that resulted in this CD, with guests Kim Wilson, Finis Tasby and Janiva Magness on board to handle the vocals.
Fletcher covers a lot of ground here, from the bouncing shuffle of "Club Zanziber" (named after a Chicago joint Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter used to play) to the jazzy organ trio sound of "Blues For Boo Boo", to the bare-bones juke joint funk of "Stranded In St. Louis", with a healthy dose of West Coast swing thrown in for good measure, plus a lot more. Along the way he also pulls off the slippery feat of capturing the essence of those classic sounds while always playing with real fire, excitement, and creativity.
So sit back and enjoy the latest from a young man blues fans will now doubt be listening to for a long time to come, Kirk "Eli" Fletcher.
- Scott Dirks
