Although the trip is winding down and we’re headed for home, the past week was filled with music and wonderful surprises.

 

We left Mississippi with a visit in Duck Hill with blues guitarist and bandleader Little Willie Farmer and in Greenville with boogie-woogie pianist and vocalist Eden Brent. Both enjoy a good laugh and sent us on our way with smiles on our faces.

A three-day stop in Louisiana only whet our appetites for the wonders of the Cajun kingdom. In addition to great food, the music is not to be missed. We tried a little Louisiana two-stepping to renditions of traditional Cajun music by Huber Maitre and Friends at Randol’s in Lafayette and thoroughly enjoyed an hour of absorbing local musical history at the Cajun Music Hall of Fame in Eunice, Louisiana.

 

We also visited with Zydeco musician Chubby Carrier, who can effortlessly drag a song like “Rock Me Baby” through the swamp for a bayou twist and were able to catch a Blues Jam in Lafayette at the Artmosphere, a combination bistro and art gallery. “Jam” on the long road is always preferable road kill, and this one was a treat. It was hosted by a loosely assembled local group who were all deeply entrenched in Louisiana and Texas blues traditions – local music from local guys.

 

The next stop was Texas. Texas is rich in blues music and history, but this stop was for some “Hill Country” gospel at Angela’s Icehouse in Spicewood. Spicewood is located about 30 miles west of Austin, and the whole Hill Country area draws great musicians like blossoms draw honey bees. Angela’s weekly Sunday afternoon show features BB & Cindy Morse in front of a band consisting of Phil Brown, Pete Mitchell, and Phil Fajardo, all veteran road warriors in national rock and/or country bands. This group moved from Gospel to Hendrix and from Tejano to Dylan. It was an interesting mix from a talented bunch.

 

While music feeds the soul, “Q” (as in “BBQ”) feeds the body. Here’s a sampling of some great food:
• Tony’s Barbeque in West Point, Mississippi – There’s a smoker out front and the rib tips were great.
• Ruthie’s Café on the west end of Navasota, Texas – There was a thick plume of smoke coming from a shed on one side, and the smoked pork butt was excellent.
• Opie’s Barbeque in Spicewood, Texas – We didn’t see the smoker, but there’s enough hardwood piled out back to heat a small town. We tried it all. Opie is long gone but he left his name and some great food. Beef brisket, pork ribs, chicken, and sausage.  Superb stuff!

 

Thanks to everyone we met on this trip and that includes Will Tierce and the folks at the Crossroads Blues Society, Dr. Luther Brown and Al White, Grassroots Blues Festival, who shared their time and insights on the blues in Mississippi. Also, special thanks to everyone who sent us emails directing us to blues and BBQ on our trip.  

 

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Jeannie Cheatham is the closest thing that San Diego has to music royalty, and the Museum of Making Music is honoring her Saturday evening with a gala that will see the jazz and blues singer/pianist perform with her and her late husband Jimmy's Sweet Baby Blues Band.

 

Cheatham will be presented with the museum's Music Maker of the Year Award at Saturday evening's annual fundraising event. The museum's executive director, Carolyn Grant, said the decision to honor Cheatham came down to the impact that her music has had not only on the local music scene, but nationally.

"She is recognized as one of the great local contributors to the jazz and blues scene," Grant wrote in an e-mail earlier this week. "Secondly, from a museum perspective, she definitely holds an important place for the fact that she and Jimmy were responsible for the launch of the Sweet Baby Blues Band and re-establishing the Kansas City style. Their contribution to keep that style alive and in the public ear is very important."

 

Talking to anyone around town in the local jazz and blues scenes garners similar reactions to Cheatham's Saturday honor.

 

Mark DeBoskey, station manager of KSDS-FM (Jazz 88.3), wrote in an e-mail exchange, "When Jimmy and Jeannie located to San Diego, they helped to enhance the image of San Diego as the home of world-class jazz and blues, along, of course, with many other fabulous musicians. And Jimmy's role as an educator only served to further the future of jazz."

 

North County-based jazz guitarist Peter Sprague counts himself among their fans: "Jeannie and Jimmy brought to San Diego the full-on hard-core jazz-blues roots of Kansas City. Hearing them live was to take a cool ride back to where the tradition was formed ---- lots of attitude, saucy notes and fantastic enthusiasm. I love their spirit!"

 

 

Bassist Gunnar Biggs of Carlsbad was for about four years the regular bassist at the Cheathams' Sunday night jam sessions at the Sheraton on Harbor Island, and, later, the Mercedes Room at the Bahia Resort Hotel on Mission Bay. He said those long-running jam sessions (from the mid-1970s through the mid-'80s) were a critical part of growing and nurturing San Diego's jazz community.

"It was not only the school for jazz, but one of the last great hangs in San Diego," Biggs said by phone Monday. "You could be sure if you went down to the jam session, there'd be someone to hang out with. That's what created the jazz community around here.

 

"I counted 15 horn players once! I asked Jimmy, 'Why don't you limit it to four horn players per song? We'll still get through everybody over the course of the night.' But Jimmy said, 'No, everybody gets a chance to play!' Of course, that meant the bassist and drummer had to play the same song for 30 or 40 minutes! For the rhythm section, this was our pushups, our long morning runs.

 

Starting out playing the jazz and blues clubs near her Akron, Ohio, home in the years before World War II, Jeannie Evans played with everyone from Dakota Staton to Jimmy Rushing. And when she met and married Jimmy Cheatham in the mid-1950s, they began a musical and domestic partnership that lasted until his passing in January 2007.

 

After hosting their weekly jam session for the better part of a decade, Jeannie and Jimmy released a series of albums with their Sweet Baby Blues Band on Concord Records ---- with their signature song, "Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On," making them a staple of jazz and blues festivals around the world.

Now living in Rancho Penasquitos after moving out of the University City condo she and Jimmy shared for some 30 years, Cheatham said by phone Monday that she's reassembled the Sweet Baby Blues Band and is looking forward to Saturday's show.

 

 

Cheatham said that when she and Jimmy arrived in the mid-'70s, moving from L.A., where they'd relocated from Madison, Wis., they found San Diego to be a town well-stocked with top-flight jazz talent.

 

"I thought it was bubbling. It was sort of scattered, but the quality of the guys who were here ---- you had Peter Sprague, Daniel Jackson, Calvin Jackson, Jimmy Zollar. That's where I found all of the guys. I remember some of those ancient guys we met, who had been here when we got here. Oliver Luck was here, played trombone. Frank Lamarca was here; he played with us in Grover Mitchell's band."

 

While in Madison, where Jimmy had taught in the music program at the University of Wisconsin, they had hosted a weekly jam session at a local club ---- a tradition they soon re-established in San Diego."That's how we learned, because the older musicians let us sit in when we were growing up. Jazz school was the jam session. ... They'd let us sit in, and if we weren't good enough, they'd say, 'You better go back to school,'" Jeannie recalled, laughing.

 

Their San Diego Sunday night jam sessions grew in fame to the point that big-name jazz stars from Los Angeles and even Las Vegas would drive down to San Diego on Sunday nights to share in the experience. Red Callender, Illinois Jacquet, Snooky Young ---- you never knew who would be there on a given night.

"Most of the cats who made the trip were from the Middle West or New York," Cheatham said. "They had that extra energy that they wanted to play at all costs.

"We did that from the time we were in high school ----- we'd drive 100 miles for a jam session. If we heard so and so was going to be there, we'd go find somebody good to cut him down!

 

"Now they don't really have it like that. You get a bunch of cats who know each other and play well ---- that's not a jam session. A jam session is a diverse group of people from all over ---- like a gumbo. A real jam session you don't know half the tunes, you don't know the guys, but you dare to come in and add your voice to this. That's a real jam session." Cheatham said the famed Kansas City "cutting sessions" of the 1930s ---- in which two musicians playing the same instrument would attempt to out-play each other, the audience voting for the winner with their cheers ----- were an example of the traditional jazz jam session. "That was part of the jam session ---- the challenges," she said. And how many times did Cheatham herself get cut? "Not many!" she said quickly, then broke out laughing. "Most piano players, we can play all by ourselves ---- we get an attitude." Still, she said, those few times she did lose, she learned from it. "I learn something every time I play, even now. You don't know the stage. When you get on, you have to immediately come together with what you have to work with. You have a sound check, but sometimes you get a soundman who's got itchy fingers who wants you to sound different than you did when you rehearsed."

 

While she's 82 now, Cheatham sounds as good as ever ---- and given her family history, there's no reason to suspect she'll be slowing down any time soon.

"My mom is 101 ---- still growing her roses, and going to her ice cream socials."

 

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26

Where: Museum of Making Music, 5790 Armada Drive, Carlsbad,Ca

Admission: $90

Info: 760-438-5996, ext. 177, or museumofmakingmusic.org

 

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