Saffire the Uppity Blues Women bid farewell to fans

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Saffire the Uppity Blues Women bid farewell to fans
June 5, 2009
by Andrew Gilbert
The Seattle Times

fter a quarter-century of cracking wise and raising Cain, telling tales and writing rollicking songs, Saffire the Uppity Blues Women are going their separate ways.

Featuring pianist Ann Rabson, guitarist Gaye Adegbalola and string wizard Andra Faye (who all contribute vocals and tunes), the award-winning trio has collected more than enough laurels to rest upon.

They've shared stages with blues legends such as B.B. King, Willie Dixon and Koko Taylor, delivering politically pointed, double-entendre-laden, melodically engaging originals and well-chosen vintage numbers.

As the first acoustic combo signed by Alligator Records, the trio played a key role in bringing old-time blues onto the contemporary scene.

Frequent faculty members at Port Townsend Centrum workshops, the women bid farewell to their Seattle fans on Saturday at the Triple Door, where they celebrate the release of their valedictory CD, "Havin' The Last Word" (Alligator).

"We've been together for 25 years or so, and we've all wanted to go in different directions as time goes by," says Rabson by phone from her home in rural Virginia. "Our vision isn't necessarily in sync as it once was. We don't want to lower the quality, so we're going out while we still love it."

From the beginning Saffire brought together three singular talents.

Rabson is among the most respected barrelhouse-blues pianists on the scene, a sought-after sidewoman who's recorded with a divergent array of artists, including Cephas and Wiggins, Pinetop Perkins, Deb Coleman, Steve James and Ani DiFranco.

She first met Adegbalola when the respected educator (who was honored as Virginia State Teacher of the Year in 1982) approached her for blues lessons. Adegbalola came to music as a third career after years as a bacteriologist and teacher in the Fredericksburg Public Schools, and before long she and Rabson were performing as a duo.

Joined by bassist/vocalist Earlene Lewis, they created Saffire the Uppity Blues Women, a group that translated the outspoken, independent spirit of pioneering blues stars like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie through a second-wave feminist sensibility.

When Lewis left the band in 1992, Saffire expanded its instrumental palette by recruiting Faye, who's accomplished on bass, mandolin, violin and guitar.

"John Cephas saw to it that we got heard," says Rabson, referring to the great Piedmont blues guitarist who died last March. "He got us on the bill with different shows. Even before we signed with Alligator we were on the bill with B.B. King, but Alligator really lifted us up.

"They got our music out to DJs and reviewers and things took off."

In many ways, Saffire honors the spirit of the early blues as well as the sound. As Elijah Wald argues persuasively in his 2004 book "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" (Amistad), in the decades before World War II musical categories were much more amorphous. Rather than representing the distilled essence of a rural tradition, the iconic country blues musicians were skilled entertainers who often played a variety of styles and songs, looking to please as wide an audience as possible.

"The blues is a big room with a lot of different tents," Rabson says.

"When we started, we had a wide variety of stuff, lots of originals and some show tunes. Earlene liked to do country songs, and Gaye liked to do some doo-wop from her youth — well, our youth. I did some Billie Holiday songs and standards like 'On the Sunny Side of the Street.' You do what people want to hear, but you put your mark on it."