Bluer than blue
Bluer than blue
February 9, 2011
By Deborah RamÃrez
Sun Sentinel
When blues artists sing about the range of human emotion, from sorrow and pain to the joy of being alive, they are expected to know what they're talking about. Janiva Magness knows only too well.
Magness, who performs Saturday at the 22nd Riverwalk Blues & Music Festival in Fort Lauderdale, has a bio more blue than any of her songs. By age 16, both her parents had committed suicide — but life only got worse for the Detroit native. For the next several years, Magness bounced around foster homes, became pregnant and homeless, abused drugs and alcohol, and at one point, contemplated suicide.
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But that's just Act 1.
Act 2 is a complete about-face filled with dreams come true moments of, as she calls it, "grace."
At 54, Magness has emerged as a leading contemporary blues artist with records that consistently top the blues charts. Her ninth album, The Devil Is An Angel Too, released on the premiere blues label Alligator Records, is no exception. As a vocalist and band leader, she is known for powerhouse performances. A promoter once described her as a "freight train coming at you."
"If you look at my back story, people like me don't make it," Magness said recently by phone from her home in Los Angeles. "I am in a good place these days. But it's so far away from what I ever imagined for myself. It's like being given a completely new life. That's what I call grace."
The singer lived her moment of amazing grace in 2009 when she became the second woman to win the highest honor in her field, the Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. The late Koko Taylor — who performed onstage for the last time that same evening — had been the first. B.B. King handed a weeping Magness her trophy and, adding to the emotion, the daughter she had given up for adoption some 30 years earlier was in the audience.
"It was like a dream; it still is," Magness recalled.
"It's taken me a long time to understand what the job is" she continued. "It's about human connection. The music is the gift but the job is about connecting and in order to do that I have to tell the truth."
These days, Magness tells the truth not only from the stage, but also from the podium. For the past five years, she has served as national spokesperson for Foster Care Month in May and works closely with the "Save a Life Campaign" that helps children in the foster-care system. It's a cause she embraces with missionary zeal.
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