Pop Reviews : Happy Blues From Charles Brown

Central Avenue came to Cahuenga Boulevard Tuesday when singer-keyboardist Charles Brown brought his blues-drenched quintet to Catalina, where it will be performing through Sunday.

Now in the middle of a major comeback at 69, Brown puts his stamp on this jubilant band from the first chord out of his piano and the first grainy tones out of his voice. As he moves from slow blues to blues ballad to jump blues, telling us about goin’ down slow and crying last night and bad whiskey and living in a fool’s paradise, you wonder: How can anyone sing so happily about such bad conditions? Why do you feel so good about someone so sad?

Brown’s attack on the keyboard recalls the early Count Basie of Kansas City memory. His singing echoes Jimmy Rushing and T-Bone Walker, a groove that is emphasized by the soaring guitar of Danny Caron, who mixes Walker with B.B. King.

This is an organized, impressive-looking band. The sidemen as well as the sidewoman, bassist Rush Davies, wear tuxedo uniforms while Brown sports a Basie-style nautical cap and a glittering jacket.

With Clifford Solomon, an ex-Ray Charles band member, doing for the tenor sax what Louis Jordan did for the alto, and with drummer Gaylord Birch furnishing just the right back beat, this group suggests a blend of Jordan’s fondly remembered Tympany Five and the old Three Blazers, a group with which Brown launched the West Coast blues movement almost 50 years ago. In short, we learn, paradoxically, that an instant cure for the blues is the blues according to Brown.