| Saturday
Night on BBC London 94.9 FM
8
November 03
Robert
Cray plus Liu Fang live
Always
a warm and gently enthusiastic sparring partner, Robert Cray is an unusual
radio guest on at least two levels. He not only has the gift of being able
to  summarise
what he likes about a favourite record in just a few words, but is able
to appreciate and react to an unfamiliar record on hearing it for the first
time.
Robert’s
choices mostly straddled the blurred line where blues meets soul. I had
not known before that Ike & Tina Turner’s 1969 single ‘Bold
Soul Sister’ featured blues guitar hot shot, Albert Collins; Aretha
Franklin’s song featured blues in its title. I wondered if the distinction
could simply be that blues singers usually played guitar (or piano), while
hands-free soul singers could play around with microphone stands?
A vital part of the Miami soul
scene of the early 1970s, Little Beaver was typical of those who could
be classified in either camp, a singing guitarist like Robert himself.
Along with two other Miami veterans, Benny Latimore and Betty Wright,
Beaver is among the musicians involved on the debut album by Joss Stone,
a 16-year-old white singer from Devon in south west England, who sounds
like she grew up in Alabama during the 1960s, singing in church every
Sunday.
As
we started to play a track from a vinyl album by Junior Wells, a sudden
power shortage caused the entire radio desk to close down. Luckily, we
were only a minute away from the news break that splits the show in two,
and we were able to decamp to another studio and start the same song again
after the news.
 Hearing
Oliver Mtukudzi for the first time, Robert was reminded of Toots Hibbert
(of Toots and the Maytals), noted the unusual harmonies, the sudden changes
of gear and the uplifting spirit of the song; in Salif Keita’s ‘Baba’,
the rhythms sounded Brazilian. Robert and his band play the Hammersmith
Apollo on Monday night (10th Nov), supported by John Hiatt.
At
the beginning of the show, we took advantage of a brief visit to London
by Liu Fang, the Chinese musician now based in Montreal, who has the final
track on the Rough Guide to the Music of China. Playing the pipa, a four
stringed lute, she started quietly, with each note ringing out in a manner
that sounds uniquely Chinese; but as the tune ebbed and flowed, the occasional
crescendos of fast picking were reminiscent of Appalachian mountain style
banjo. Masterful, graceful and riveting, Liu will surely return for UK
concerts next year, hopefully including WOMAD Reading.
These
shows are now streamed
for a week, almost immediately after the transmission.We broadcast from
8 to 10 every Saturday Night on BBC London on 94.9 FM in the London area
and worldwide at www.bbc.co.uk/london
Guest
images by Philip Ryalls.
In
the playlist below, tracks marked with an asterisk were those chosen by
Robert. |
