Cal State Long Beach to Host 10th Annual Blues Festival

Bernie Pearl will tell you that blues music is not as sorrowful as you might think. Instead, he says, it’s really a kind of “folk therapy” to get your mind off your troubles.

“People have the impression that it’s a head-hung-down and depressing kind of music,” says Pearl, host of Nothin’ But the Blues on KLON-FM. “In reality, it’s expression that’s meant to move both the singer and the participants, to move you from the blue mood and put a smile on your face.

“When somebody is really and truly expressing their thoughts in a poetic way, and their emotions in a poetic way, that’s the blues,” Pearl says.

Music on the Field

And what better place to find out about the blues than the 10th annual Long Beach Blues Festival? The festival is today and Sunday on a football field at Cal State Long Beach, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

More than 16,000 people are expected to attend the event, which has become the largest blues festival west of the Mississippi. Tickets are $20 per day at the gate, and children under 12 will be admitted free.

The festival is a benefit for nonprofit radio station KLON (88 FM), which has an all-jazz format. The station is supported by listener subscriptions, grants, concerts and the festival. Cal State Long Beach also provides support, because the station is located on campus and serves as a lab for students studying in related fields, such as radio and television, journalism, public relations and business.

Festival-goers are invited to bring blankets, beach chairs, picnic lunches and their families to “spend a wonderful day in the sun listening to great music,” says Sharon Weissman, KLON station manager.

“I think some people come just because they love being there,” she says. “They’re not particularly fans of the blues, but they just have such a good time. Then there also are a lot of people there who really love the blues.

“There aren’t many opportunities to hear the blues,” Weissman says, “and not only do we give people a chance to hear it live . . . but the festival also helps support blues musicians, because they can only continue to make music and write music if they can make a living at it.”

Today’s lineup includes: Johnny Shines and the Legendary Blues Band, Grady Gaines and The Upsetters, John Hammond, Buddy Guy, Little Milton and the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Sunday’s performers are: Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, Terrance Simien and the Mallet Playboys, Charles Brown, Koko Taylor, Solomon Burke and John Lee Hooker.

The music of each of the 12 acts is “very, very different, so it will show people in an entertaining way what the different styles of the blues are,” Pearl says.

And the styles are varied.

The legendary John Lee Hooker represents the more traditional blues, singing and playing his guitar in an unusual, primal Mississippi style. His powerful style is said to have influenced such artists as the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Grady Gaines, who played lead sax for Little Richard in his heyday, leads the Upsetters with a Texas rhythm-and-blues orientation in a kind of honky-tonk style.

Same Musical Coin

Simien and the Mallet Playboys are from Louisiana and play a “hard-rocking zydeco, which is the black French-speaking people’s version of rhythm and blues,” Pearl says. “It combines old French country accordion music with the blues.” He says Cajun music and zydeco “are two different sides of the same coin.”

The blues style of Solomon Burke, who Pearl says once claimed to have coined the term “soul music,” is heavily influenced by gospel music. “His big knack is to get the audience and preach ‘em a sermon about how to live and how to love in life,” Pearl says.

The Fabulous Thunderbirds is a modern blues band from Texas that “basically rocks the blues,” Pearl says, in a way that Elvis Presley did in the early days.

The festival gives people a chance to experience what blues music is all about, Pearl says. “You get the idea that the music of the blues is about people,” he says. “By and large, the performers at the festival are black, authentic black representatives of the blues. The majority of the audience is white, and there is simply no barrier.”

The blues come from the black experience in America. At the turn of the century, Pearl says, blues was a social music. “People played it for other people to express themselves, and people could dance to it and just emote to it. It was the music of poor black people, and their experience is life.”

Pearl learned about the blues from prominent black musicians, such as Brownie McGee, who came to Los Angeles to play at his brother Ed Pearl’s Ashgrove club in the 1960s.

Traditional Music

“In truth, I look at blues as a traditional music,” Pearl says, “an oral tradition handed down by ear. The older hands it down to the younger, and the real blues should have about the same tone and feeling it did about 100 years ago.”

He says rhythm and blues, rockabilly blues, jazzy blues and “white-boy” blues all flowered from the same root, “but the basic root has to exist as what it is. The styles change, but the feeling has to be there.”

The 1989 Long Beach Blues Festival: today and Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Cal State Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach. The school is off Atherton Street between Palo Verde Avenue and Bellflower Boulevard. Free parking for the festival is available in Parking Lot C, accessible by Palo Verde Avenue. Admission at the door is $20; children 12 and under free. For information, call (213) 985-5566.