Mighty Long Flight up to Good Times

Rod Piazza hasn’t been planning anything fancy to mark his 25th year as a recording artist. In fact, he hasn’t been planning anything at all.

“I guess I should, huh?” the blues singer, harmonica player and bandleader asked over the phone from his home in Riverside on Tuesday. “I haven’t done a thing.”

Piazza, who grew up in Riverside, emerged on the Southern California blues scene in 1965 and released the first of his 14 albums in 1967, as the teen-age front man of the Dirty Blues Band. The list of surviving white blues musicians who can claim seniority over Piazza is not long, and those on it tend to be famous--names such as John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, John Hammond and Dave Van Ronk.

If Piazza isn’t looking back these days, perhaps it’s because he feels so upbeat about the present and the future. He said he and his band, the Mighty Flyers, finally are starting to break through to a national audience, after years when they had to travel to Europe to enjoy much recognition.

The upswing began last year, when they signed with the respected Louisiana-based blues and R&B; label Black Top Records and released the album “Blues in the Dark.” The band--which includes Piazza’s wife, Honey Alexander, on piano, guitarist Alex Schultz, bassist Bill Stuve and drummer Jimi Bott--has just released another Black Top album, “Alphabet Blues.” Stocked with adventurous soloing and impressive interaction, it’s an album that figures to win any fan of tough, basic, highly traditional Chicago-style blues (listeners can get a free live sampling when Piazza and the Mighty Flyers play outdoors today at South Coast Plaza Village in Santa Ana).

“The last year and a half, things have really been going good,” said Piazza, 44. “There are some things I don’t want to talk about yet, because it hasn’t all been solidified, but things are popping. Record-wise, things are looking good, and tour-wise, maybe in the next year we’ll be moving to a higher level”--meaning a jump from the clubs to slots as an opening act at large venues.

Piazza said the band recently finished a five-week national tour, and there are bookings at several blues festivals on the itinerary for next month.

“I used to do better in Europe,” where blues bands undervalued in the United States tend to find larger and more appreciative audiences, but now, Piazza said, “the money in the States is just about edging out what we could earn in Europe. In the last year, it has almost doubled. Everything has gotten so positive in the States that I don’t need to go (to Europe). You can eat the food you know, and be able to read the signs.”

Eating the food you know is something Piazza can appreciate. In his early years, he learned what it’s like to be on tour not knowing whether you’ll eat at all. It happened in 1968, when he made his first cross-country trek as a backup musician for Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton.

“I never did get paid. We were living on a shoestring, and we just barely got enough to eat. I remember living on a loaf of bread, a pepperoni, and some Cracker Barrel cheese. That’s all I had for four days. That put a hurtin’ on your system. It was rough. But since I was a little boy I wanted to play music.”

Piazza was just 7 or 8 when he started playing the guitar, trying to copy licks from his two older brothers’ collection of blues and R&B; records. He took up the harmonica at 15, having dropped out of school in the 9th grade, and soon hooked up with other young blues aficionados from Riverside in the Dirty Blues Band.

Playing at the old Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, they came to the attention of a Hollywood-based producer, and by 1967 they had a deal with BluesWay/ABC Records.

“At that time, we were pretty optimistic, but it was too quick,” he said. “We weren’t quite ready. When the first record came out, we were just kids and hadn’t been playing long enough. I got slammed down a lot when I started. I played a whole week at the Golden Bear opening for James Cotton (the great Chicago blues harmonica player) when I was 17. It was rough. It wasn’t so much that (the audience was) booing, but you’d finish a tune, and you wouldn’t get much response. You could hear a pin drop.”

A turning point in Piazza’s development came in 1968 when he spent a week opening for Howlin’ Wolf at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles.

“I never did hit it off really well with Wolf,” Piazza said. “He didn’t like me ‘cause I was white.” But another old-line bluesman, George (Harmonica) Smith, took a liking to the young harp player during that stand and began sitting in with him.

Smith, who had started out on the Chicago blues scene in the 1950s and moved to Los Angeles, became Piazza’s mentor and regular playing partner in a double-harmonica band called Bacon Fat.

“We were like two brothers, one older and been around 35 years already, and one coming into it new,” Piazza said. “I learned a lot of attitude from him, what it means to be a musician up there doing your craft and your job, rather than being a kid enthralled in a fantasy. When you play enough nights in Watts making $15 a night, the glamour goes away, and you realize you’re only doing this because you love the music.”

Ask Piazza to pinpoint the best night of his career, and he’ll look back on a performance that he and Smith, who died in 1983, gave at the Golden Bear in 1969 or 1970:

“George Smith was standing on top of the upright piano blowing harp, I’m on the stage, and the whole band’s crankin,’ doing ‘I Got My Mojo Working.’ It was a show where people almost started to faint.”

Piazza’s current band began to take shape as far back as 1973 when Alexander, who had grown up in Northern California, saw his old band play and pressed him for a job.

“She had learned classical piano as a kid, and she saw Otis Spann playing in the ‘60s and decided that’s what she wanted to play. My band was really the first group she played in. She’s one of a kind. I don’t think there are any women out there playing tough, Chicago blues on piano, except Honey.”

The professional relationship became a romantic one as well 15 years ago, after Piazza and his first wife were divorced. Together, Piazza and Alexander raised her son and daughter from a previous marriage.

Bassist Stuve joined in 1977, when the group was known as the Chicago Flying Saucer Band. In 1980, a record producer suggested shortening the name, and they came up with Mighty Flyers. The nucleus of Piazza, Alexander and Stuve has been constant, and there has been only slight turnover in the other slots. Shultz replaced Junior Watson, the band’s original guitarist, four years ago; Bott, the third Flyers drummer, has been in the band for six years.

Asked about the band’s longevity and cohesiveness, Piazza said: “It just takes a lot of concessions on everybody’s part to try to get along and think of the next guy. I try to let everyone in the band do a portion of the show (as featured soloist) so they don’t feel slighted.”

As his career moves ahead (the days when he had to work in a fiberglass factory are more than 10 years behind him now), Piazza looks forward to some chapters re-emerging. He said HightTone Records is scheduled to issue a compilation CD of earlier Mighty Flyers material, and Black Top plans next year to put out two ‘80s-vintage Piazza solo albums, “Harpburn” and “So Glad to Have the Blues.”

Even with the forward steps taken during the past two years, Piazza said, there still are bad nights “when you go out there expecting to see 300 people and there’s just but 21. But it’s gotten better. I have no business complaining about anything right now.”

* Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers play a free concert today from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at South Coast Plaza Village, Sunflower Avenue and Bear Street, Santa Ana. (714) 435-2050. They also play Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at the Golden Sails Hotel, 6285 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. Tickets: $10. (310) 596-1631.