Bland, Mahal to headline blues fest Legends of genre bring eclectic mix

ROCKLAND – If you’re going to hold a blues festival, why not line up two legendary performers as your headliners?

That’s what organizer Paul Benjamin has done for the 11th annual North Atlantic Blues Festival, set for Saturday and Sunday at Harbor Park in Rockland. He went out and got Bobby “Blue” Bland and Taj Mahal.

Saturday’s headliner Bland, 74, has been on the blues scene for more than 50 years. Among his best-known singles are “I Pity the Fool,” “Lead Me On,” “Turn on Your Love Light” and his rendition of T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday Blues.”

Born Robert Calvin Brooks in a tiny Tennessee town, Bland (he later took his father’s surname) moved as a teen to the blues hotbed of Memphis, where he sang gospel and learned his trademark blues snort by watching the sermons of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, father of Aretha.

He began working, then singing, on Memphis’ famed Beale Street, becoming a member of the short-lived Beale Streeters along with B.B. King, Johnny Ace and Junior Parker. He gained national prominence with a number of hit singles in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

Bland signed with Malaco Records in 1985. Since then, he has released 11 albums for that label, most recently “Blues at Midnight” in 2003. He has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Blues Foundation.

Sunday’s headliner Taj Mahal is as much musicologist as musician, exploring reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, and even Hawaiian and blending those influences with his blues.

Born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York, he grew up in a house full of music, with his father a jazz pianist-composer-arranger of Jamaican descent and his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel.

He became Taj Mahal (the name came to him in a dream) and pursued music while studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts. After graduating in 1964, he moved west to Los Angeles and formed the Rising Suns with Ry Cooder. Executives at their record label, Columbia, didn’t know what to do with their prescient brand of Americana, and their only album waited until 1992 to be released.

Since the mid-’60s, Mahal, 62, has been a solo artist, following where his muse takes him. He has developed a devoted following, including younger blues musician Keb’ Mo’, who said of him, “I finally did meet the man himself. I was able to go to the recording studio and watch him work. I saw a man so full of the energy of divine inspiration. A man connected to his ancestors, a man with no fear of being creative and going where ever his soul told him to go.”

Mahal first started playing with the seven-member Hula Blues Band when he moved to Kauai, Hawaii, in 1981 during a career lull. They tour annually during the summer and have released two albums, 1997’s “Sacred Island” and 2003’s “Hanapepe Dream.”

For more information, call 593-1189 or access www.northatlanticbluesfestival.com.

North Atlantic Blues Festival

Saturday, July 10: 11-11:30 a.m., Blind Albert Blues Band; 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m., Sherman Robertson; 1-2, Cephas & Wiggins; 2:15-3:15, EG Kight; 3:30-4:45, Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blowout with Paul Delay and Billy Branch; 5-6:15, Bobby “Blue” Bland.

Sunday, July 11: 11-11:30 a.m., Steve Bailey Band; 11:45 a.m.-12:45 p.m., Ana Popovic; 1-2, Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne; 2:15-3:15, Michael Burks; 3:30-4:30, Bettye Lavette; 4:45-6, Taj Mahal & the Hula Blues Band.