Best
Blues
Local guitar hero Jeff Healey was presented with the Blues With a Feeling Award at the Fifth Annual Maple Blues Awards gala on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto. Photo by Bill King
Canada's blues community honoured its own at the fifth annual Maple Blues Awards, held in Toronto on Tuesday, January 29.
One of the two major winners was Ottawa-based singer, guitarist and songwriter Sue Foley - who repeated her triumph of last year by winning, for the second year in a row, honours as Entertainer of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Guitarist of the Year.
If the evening was a triumph for Foley, it was no less so for Paul Reddick and his Toronto-based band The Sidemen. Nominated for no less than nine awards, Reddick's 2001 album on the NorthernBlues label, Rattlebag, was named Recording of the Year, and he was also chosen SOCAN Songwriter of the Year for the original material on the release. Finally, the group was chosen Electric Act of the Year. The producer of Rattlebag, Colin Linden, also won the nod as Producer of the Year - he won the title the previous year for his work on Sue Foley's then-current album.
It was another happy evening for Sue Foley, who honed her craft during an extended stay in Austin, Texas, where she worked with a wide variety of musicians before she headed back to Canada three years ago.
And for Paul Reddick, who has a day job as a dog walker, the event was a vindication of ten years' work leading The Sidemen. The band has recorded three previous CDs, but Rattlebag (named after a collection of poetry edited by Ted Hughes) has been a breakthrough that has also led to a nomination for Best New Artist Debut of the Year at the W.C. Handy Awards held in Memphis in May.
The gala event, held at the Phoenix Concert Theatre (Toronto), is organized by the Toronto Blues Society; winners are chosen by votes from its 600-odd members, in conjunction with members of the Montreal, Ottawa, and Thunder Bay Blues Societies, the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society in B.C., the CBC Radio show Saturday Night Blues, and the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in New Brunswick.
Other major winners included Montreal's Michael Jerome Browne, picked as Acoustic Act of the Year, and John Mays, veteran singer with Toronto's hard-working band Fathead.
Instrumental winners included Pat Carey, tenor sax player with the Downchild Blues Band, bassist Stephen Barry (who leads the Montreal-based Stephen Barry Band), harmonica player Tortoise Blue from the Big Daddy G Band, hardworking session drummer Tom Bona, and pianist Richard Bell, a former member of The Band and one-time accompanist for Janis Joplin.
New Artist of the Year honours went to a strong new Montreal band, Big Mark & The Blues Express, who won the Toronto Blues Society New Talent Showcase award last year. Leader Mark Legault also wins a $1,000 bursary, presented by Galaxie, the CBC's continuous digital music channel.
International Artist of the Year was Duke Robillard, founder of the American band Roomful of Blues, and now signed worldwide to the Canadian label Stony Plain, for which he has also produced and played on recordings by a wide variety of American and Canadian artists.
Two additional special awards - one voted for by Toronto Blues Society members, the other by its directors - were also presented. The TBS members gave its prestigious Blues With a Feeling Award to the internationally respected guitarist Jeff Healey, who currently runs his own club in Toronto, and now leads a jazz group specializing in the music of the '20s,'30s and early '40s.
The Blues Booster of the Year award went to Fred Litwin, a former computer industry executive who retired to start his own Canadian label, NorthernBlues. In a little over a year, the label has become established not only in this country, but in the U.S., Europe, and Australia as well as other foreign territories.