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John Bigham, a former Miles Davis protégé and funky Fishbone almumni, takes a blue turn at Café Boogaloo tonight
Question: what do you get when you take a guitarist who cut his musical teeth playing with Miles Davis, paid his badass dues playing with far-out funk outfit Fishbone, eventually founded his own hip-hop infused soul band…and then inject him with a heavy dose of the blues?
Answer: the Soul of John Black, aka John Bigham, coming straight at you at Café Boogaloo tonight.
The band, whose critically acclaimed eponymous first album was hailed as “a whole new brand of soul” by Rolling Stone magazine, has stripped things down to the essence that underlies all American popular music. With the recently released “Good Girl Blues,” Bigham has produced an album that spans a good 150 years in its influences, from old spiritual moans to dandified 1930s Piedmont style blues to James Brown bounces, Al Green croons, Prince-tinged swoops and an occasional backbeat that sounds straight outta Dr. Dre.
He has, in other words, made what just might be the freshest sounding blues album of this new century.
Bigham grew up in Chicago and lives in Hollywood, and “Good Girl Blues” is an album that shows its roots in the former while telling stories of the latter. He said in an interview this week that he found himself almost subconsciously drifting toward the blues and then decided to run with it.
“I grew up with that stuff from my parents,” he said. “But it was like one of those things like it was always there but you don’t really think about it, then later on it comes back into your life somehow. That is kind of how I got involved in the blues. It was always around, and I found myself kind of imitating some of those guys. I thought it was kind of fun the way they sang. It was so loose, all the inside jokes and innuendos. I thought it was very cool and I just picked up on it.”
Bigham’s varied musical journey began as grade school “b-band” horn player and snare drummer who gravitated, out of pure embarrassment, to the guitar as a teenager. His mother had bought him a guitar that he’d barely touched until he saw a friend whose mother had also given him a guitar. “I saw him one day and he was playing the hell out of it and I felt so bad because I had a guitar and couldn’t play it, so I just had to learn how to play,” he recalled.
While Bigham was still in high school, his family moved to Atlanta, where he formed a series of cover bands before graduating and joining the Air Force. He was based in California, and when his three years were up, he went to Hollywood. He was playing music in the “underground” scene when one of his tapes made its way into Miles Davis’ hands. He auditioned, didn’t get the gig, and went back to parking cars for a living. Then a short time later he was summoned by the jazz legend to write a song. That song, “Jilli,” was featured on Amandla, the last album the late trumpeter ever made.
His friendship with Davis would have a lasting impact on Bigham.
“It wasn’t just a band thing,” Bigham said. “I was around all the time. I would go out to his house and just stay there all day long. I took the opportunity to ask him every question I ever wanted to ask….I asked him, ‘What should I do, go to New York or stay in LA?’ I wanted to be one of those super jazz guys, but the New York days for him were long gone and he was like, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.’”
What Bigham does is go most decidedly his own way. After spending the better part of a decade with Fishbone as a guitarist, keyboard player, and writer, Bigham had the urge to take full control of his own musical destiny. He amicably “left” the band over a beer, then shared the little recording studio they all worked out of at the corner of Hollywood and Highland, where he began tracking his own material in post-midnight recording sessions in which he’d play all the instruments.
Thus was born the Soul of John Black, which eventually grew to include bassist and songwriter Chris Thomas. “He came down, we hung out and jammed, and he was in the band,” Bigham said. “That was it. I was kind of having like a Prince moment where I was writing all the songs and I didn’t want anyone else writing, but finally I said to him, ‘You know what? What do you got for this?’”
But Thomas, who has a background that includes stints with Betty Carter and the Marsalis family, didn’t feel the urge to explore the blues on this latest record. Bigham, who has toured and done session work with artists as varied as Eminem, Dr. Dre, Bruce Hornsby, and Everlast, started feeling drawn to the genre when he wrote a soundtrack and some songs for a short film.
“All the music was blues-based and I had four original songs that I made some changes to fit the movie...and I had some left over and, you know, the more I listened to it, I was like, ‘Dang, I think I could actually pull this off. I think I could do it.’ So I just went for it.”
He immersed himself in all things blue, going so far as to buy himself a pawnshop Stella (the cheap, big body acoustic guitars favored by many an old country bluesman), teaching himself open-tunings and slide guitar. The album opens and closes with “The Hole,” a song that goes right to the metaphysical core of the blues:
“I went down in the hole to see what I could see
When I got down in the hole wasn’t nobody but me…”
The album should come with a warning concerning this song: it has an irresistible kind of groove that will have you spontaneously emitting choruses, “Down in the hole!” It’s a fusion of blues, hip-hop, and gospel (including a small choir) that has some greasy slide guitar slathered on over the top and even some record-scratching down low. The fact the album opens and closes with it effectively announces that these are some downright different blues, indeed.
As Bigham said, this blues isn’t about style so much as it is that deep down feeling. “I think that song kind of covers the basic feeling in blues,” Bigham said. “I was feeling bad and I wanted to feel better. You know, I found myself all by myself down here feeling bad, and I realized it wasn’t doing me any good…
“I needed to come out of it,” he added with a chuckle, “so I needed a choir to help me shout about it and sing my way out of this hole. It’s just a fun song.”
The overriding vibe of the album is good time blues, with the rollicking barroom “Fire Blues” and the sexual swagger of “I Got Work” (“I’m goin’ put in some work on you, baby…”). But while Bigham plays some sizzling licks throughout, one thing that is notably absent are a bunch of extended guitar solos. Bigham promises he’ll be tearing it up tonight at Boogaloo (“If you want to hear me solo, now’s the chance,” he said. “Come and get it while it’s hot…”) but his take on the blues isn’t about being a guitar hero. His approach is more akin to things he learned from Miles and his other musical heroes.
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