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Colin James
Colin James and his Little Big Band will play Massey Hall on Feb. 9, 2007.
He is still just a youthful-looking 42, but Colin James clearly justifies the term "veteran". He has now been a professional musician for close to 30 years, and has traveled down many different musical roads in a fascinating career.
The Regina-born Colin James Munn was touring Saskatchewan in a folk group at age 13, then quit school at 16 to play with punk-rockers Nick Danger and the Close Calls. His love of the blues then took hold, via his band Hoodoo Men. He was soon good enough to open for blues greats like John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and his 1988 self-titled debut album spawned hits like "Voodoo Thing," "Why'd You Lie" (a great song by Morgan Davis)," and "Five Long Years."
His solo records since then have traversed blues, soul, pop and rock territory. They've found mixed commercial success, but total international album sales well in excess of a million units is an impressive figure. Colin is a man of genuine eclectic tastes, but you could say that, for him, all roads lead back to the blues and its close cousin, classic r 'n' b. These genres continue to fire Colin's musical muse, and his passion nicely complements a near-encyclopedic knowledge of these forms. His status as a blues-rooted artist has certainly been recognized by numerous Maple Blues Awards and his being chosen as host for the Awards in 2002.
The current Colin James CD, Little Big Band 3, is his tenth album, a milestone of which he is justifiably proud. "Magic Ten is the name of my studio in Vancouver, too," he tells Maple Blues during a recent Toronto promotional visit. "It is great to hang in in a business like this, and it's great for the live show, having so many songs to choose from."
His well-honed skill as a performer is a key reason for James' longevity, and his love of gigging remains. "I still love playing live like crazy. I just can't wait for tours," he says. Happily, he'll demonstrate this to a large Toronto audience on February 9th, when he checks into Massey Hall with his Little Big Band.
This project has played a large and successful role in Colin's career since he unveiled it in 1993. The first Colin James And The Little Big Band album was a multi-platinum success, and helped James score an opening slot on a Rolling Stones tour. A 1998 sequel was also well-received, earning Colin a Juno for Best Producer (he has won a half-dozen Junos), and he's now back with a third.
The template for the series is to take some of the best jump blues and early r 'n' b tunes around, assemble some of North America's finest players, and breathe new life into a genre that has oft been neglected. Colin both predated and outlasted the superficial and somewhat silly swing revival of the mid '90s, but he recalls, to his chagrin, that he was unfairly accused of being a bandwagoneer during that craze.
"I'd go to Chicago and it was snooty fashion people there. If I played a blues song, they'd get up and walk out. They wanted swing swing swing, the hat and the suit, and I really didn't want to end up in the middle of all that. I got taken to task all through the States as a bandwagon jumper, but I'd done that record 18 months before Brian Setzer did his. It just took me that long to get a U.S. release on Elektra. That was tough medicine, man."
James now strikes a smooth balance between releasing solo albums that stress his songwriting ability and the Little Big Band series. "I've been really happy doing albums like [2005's] Limelight, where I am trying to write more. I grew up more as a blues stylist and writing was the one thing I maybe didn't pay enough attention to. I'm trying to get better at it, and better at writing songs that suit me. Plus I'm just really enjoying singing right now, more than ever."
To Colin, "these Little Big Band records are such a nice change, because I know exactly what I'm doing. It is just about making sure you pick the right stuff and get the right players. I don't have to fret with these ones. Not that I fret with the others. I enjoy the whole process."
"The Little Big Band records have always done well, and I'm aware of that," he adds. "It is nice to have a successful record. People know exactly what they're getting with the brand, and I think that shows up sometimes in sales."
He acknowledges that "a huge amount of work goes into making a record, even one like this where I'm not writing all the material. It's a labour of love so that is fine, but from the moment you conceptualize the idea to going through all the songs, there are so many choices. Ironically, for this one I went out and bought a billion old records, and I don't think I used a single thing off them. I keep going back to the well of what I already know, but that's fine. I bought another wack of Little Willie John records, and I just used `I'm Shakin',' which is more of a memory of The Blasters version."
Fans of the earlier LBB discs are sure to love the third instalment too. There's absolutely no let up on the quality control front, and (to this scribe and others), Colin has never sung better.
Playing a key role on LBB 3 is a fellow Colin, long-time comrade Colin Linden. He produced the Juno-winning 1997 acoustic blues National Steel album and was on hand again to co-produce Limelight, but this is the first time he's co-produced a Little Big Band disc. The pair form a mutual admiration society, with James noting that "Colin's love for this music is so deep and our friendship goes so far back." In turn, Linden declares that "I've never heard Colin play or sing so amazingly well. I really believe that he's become as great as his heroes, and those guys wore pretty big shoes!"
The pair assembled another all-star cast, one including Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell, the legendary Wayne Jackson (Memphis Horns), Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughan), Keb' Mo' and ace saxophonists Greg Piccolo and Doug James, of Roomful of Blues fame. Many of these cats played on earlier LBB discs, as Colin explains that "I thought it'd be great to get a lot of the old crew back again. I just love the way Greg Piccolo plays, and I don't think a Little Big Band record is quite the same without him. He has that beatnik behind the beat sensibility that a more modern player doesn't have. It was nice to see him and Doug James get back together. They were the cornerstones of the original Roomful of Blues, but they'd been on nonspeaking terms for quite a few years."
The spontaneous vibe of the record is no accident. "It truly was a live thing," says Colin of the recording. "We just went in and cut and cut, and we did a Xmas record [out in late 2007] too. We cut 39 songs in 2 weeks. We almost had another one of these [a Little Big Band disc]. but I wanted to just have the A choices."
James laughingly describes the making of the Christmas album as "bizarre. It was 85 F in Nashville then! I never thought I'd make a Christmas record. I'm of the firm belief we probably have enough of them in this world, but I guess everybody has to do one once in their life. Those songs are so catchy, and we did a few pretty obscure ones, even a gospel tune."
A strength of the LBB series is that Colin doesn't just rely on the blues and soul staples we all know and love. "I try to find as obscure stuff as I can," he explains. "You don't want to hear the same retreaded stuff. There's so much great material out there, though I may have bled it to death. I did find it harder this time. `Reet Petite' I first did when I was 18. I cut it for the first Little Big Band record, but I didn't sing it too well. The fun is in uncovering old gems. I still haven't done a Wynonie Harris, though."
A recent self-confessed fascination is with the life and work of Sam Cooke. "I read the Peter Guralnick biography and loved it. So bloody tragic and depressing. I didn't know Mavis Staples sang at his funeral. The sad thing about listening to him is that you'll never sing as good as he did, ever! He's got that effortless falsetto. That makes me so mad as I have none. I sound like a Monty Python character. That song ["That's Where It's At] was the hardest one to decide to do."
Another of Colin's musical heroes, Roscoe Gordon, attempted to get in touch when James featured his songs on the first LBB record. "He phoned my management company at the time and wanted to talk. For some reason I was daunted by it. When I later saw the Martin Scorsese documentary I saw what a nice guy he was, and I rue not having phoned him. I imagined someone old and crotchety going `whatya doing rippin off my stuff?'"
- Kerry Doole (music journalist and fellow veteran blues fan who first interviewed Colin 20 years ago)
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