Robert Cray's guitar is still smokin'

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Robert Cray's guitar is still smokin'
November 4, 2010
Paul Freeman
Mercury News

He is a famous blues man, but Robert Cray's music also draws from soul, gospel, jazz and rock.
Cray said, "The members in the band, we like a lot of different styles of music and we listen to a lot of different things. And so, when we write, some of those things kind of pop in. And so it's a natural thing."
Cray's naturally distinctive guitar style and expressive vocals have created a large, loyal fan base and great respect among other musicians.
The Robert Cray Band signed with Mercury Records in 1982. The band's third album, 1986's "Strong Persuader," earned a Grammy Award and the single "Smokin' Gun" was a crossover hit.
Cray has garnered five Grammys and 14 nominations. The Cray band's latest release is the live CD/DVD "Cookin' in Mobile."
On Nov. 12, the Cray Band will headline at the reopened Fox Theatre, Redwood City. Opening for Cray will be the champ in The Golden Gate Blues Society's International Blues Challenge, which takes place on Sunday at Palo Alto's Club Illusions, from 4 to 8 p.m. Four bands -- J.C. Smith Band, Twice as Good, Wendy DeWitt & Kirk Harwood and Tip of the Top -- have made it through the pre-lims to earn right to battle for the crown -- and the opening slot at the Cray gig. See www.tggbs.org for details.
The Robert Cray Band doesn't use a set list and leaves plenty of room for spontaneity within their songs. Cray said, "It's always fun to change
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things up when you're on stage, instead of doing it by rote."
The 57-year-old Georgia native resides with his wife and 3-year-old son in Santa Barbara County. He began playing guitar while in high school in Virginia. His influences range from George Harrison to Jimi Hendrix to Albert Collins, Buddy Guy and B.B. King.
Cray recalled seeing Hendrix play live in Seattle. "I took pictures with my little Brownie camera. I really couldn't see him, but it was great.
"I had been playing guitar since '65 and I saw Hendrix in the late '60s. So going from listening to everything that was on the radio to hearing the opening of 'Purple Haze' just flipped me out. It was just the weirdest thing I'd ever heard. And it just grabs you and tosses you around. It was really cool. And I got all caught up in it."
Later, his attention turned to blues.
"I got turned on to listening to the blues, toward the latter days of high school. I had a couple of other friends who were listening to people with those cool names like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and all that stuff. So I got caught up in that and then realized we had a lot of those records at home. So that kind of cemented the whole thing for me.
"We tried to emulate the stuff. Me and a couple of my friends, we really got into the whole thing, listening to whatever we could get our hands on and reading about these people, the stories. At 15 and 16 years old, hearing about people like Robert Johnson and his so-called association with the devil, was pretty cool stuff."
As Cray matured, so did his music. "When you're a teenager, it's about the personalities in the music. It's about learning the licks. After you get a little bit older, it starts to get into the grooves, into the rhythms of the music. As you get older than that, you start understanding the sentiment, the lyrics in a lot of the songs. You don't understand all that feeling stuff until you get old enough to feel it."
With vibrato and note-bending, Cray instills each note with honest emotion. His singing also moves listeners.
"I'm not a blues shouter. It's the timbre of my voice. I wish I could do Howlin' Wolf, but my voice doesn't take me that way. But I still listen to it. With my voice, it's more the smoother R&B thing."
His playing and singing bring wildly enthusiastic reactions from crowds wherever Cray goes. He doesn't concern himself with matching the commercial success of "Smokin' Gun."
"We didn't think about how we were going to sustain that, because we thought it was like all a fluke for a bar band that's playing blues and R&B to have all that happening," he said, laughing. "We've never lost that thing about starting off as teenagers, playing our favorite music. And so, it just never crossed our minds to try to change anything to stay with it."
Cray credits timing with his chart success. "It was in the '80s where there was this Americana push, this roots kind of push, because, at the same time, there was Los Lobos, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Blasters, Fabulous Thunderbirds. And everybody was getting exposure. MTV was fairly new. And, as the music changed, they were looking for stuff to feature on TV."
When the mainstream spotlight waned a bit, Cray continued to fill venues and record acclaimed albums. The songs Cray has written have been recorded by B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Tony Bennett.
When he's off the road, Cray loves to cook for his family, as well as to compose new songs. "Just the fact that I'm off the road makes me more receptive to little ideas as they come. So I'll just keep my head open and maybe I'll get an idea of a song -- a line, a phrase or something like that. And it's easy to get to paper and pen."
Looking ahead, Cray said, "It's a challenge just to be in the music industry these days. So you don't really take anything for granted. You're always trying to do something that keeps it going. But mainly, for me, it's just about having a good time.
"The greatest satisfaction is coming off the stage and feeling like you've worked hard and made people smile."
As for the future of the blues, Cray said, "It's always going to be around. But it changes. And you just have to be open to the way it is. There's people that still do traditional style. But it's not one bag. It will incorporate whatever a person decides to put into it. ... like it always has."