Night of blues keeps toes tapping

Author: Margaret Ray

On Sunday evening, an audience of students, faculty and families was treated to the vocal and guitar talents of Bill Simms Jr. as he teamed up with Vermonter Mark LaVoie on harmonica for "An Evening of Blues" in the Center for the Arts.

The Blues is an old and extremely influential musical tradition. The forms range from the legendary Mississippi Delta Blues played by the likes of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, to the Chicago Blues styles of Howlin' Wolf and Little Walter. While it traces its roots to the Memphis and New Orleans area, the Blues soon migrated up the river to Chicago and Detroit where many of the most famous blues musicians were born. The influence of early Blues can be heard in almost all our more recent music. In Memphis, B. B. King invented the concept of the lead guitar that would become a staple of modern rock groups. The king of Rock and Roll himself, Elvis Presley grew up listening to the Blues on the Memphis radio, and was able to bring what had been almost entirely an African-American musical tradition to a white audience for the first time.

The Blues is a beautifully simple genre of music. Standard twelve bar Blues uses a simple three chord progression: four bars of the I chord, two bars of the IV chord, two bars of the I chord again, one bar of the V chord, one bar of the IV chord again and then back to the I chord for the last two bars. It is an extremely recognizable sound.

Bill Simms grew up playing the Blues in Ohio, where he turned pro for a group called the Jacksonian Blues at age 14. He majored in music at Ohio State where he had to opportunity to play with Blues greats Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Freddie King and Jerry Butler. In 1971, he joined the Four Mints, a rhythm and blues group that traveled the country in the 1970's opening for some of the big name bands of the decade.

In 1976 he left the band for a more jazz-based band and also explored other musical genres, but by 1988 he had returned to his Blues roots. He released a CD in 1999 on Warner Brothers at the same time as a 10 hour PBS special based on his life was aired.

LaVoie lives in Bristol, Vt and has been playing the harmonica for years. He learned some of his style from Sonny Terry.

The concert these two put on together Sunday night left everyone in the audience tapping their feet, singing along and beaming. Simms' deep bluesy voice was as good at telling jokes as it was at dancing around a melody. It was a refreshing shot of an age-old tradition not often heard in New England. I'm sure I was not the only one from the audience who went home and put on my Muddy Waters or B.B King while I typed a paper.