O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Blues Festival Cooks With Dash of Salsa

COSTA MESA — Given the limited, repetitious fare common to blues fests, it’s a godsend that definitions are being loosened up a bit to allow soul, gospel and other blues-related music into their lineups: The Long Beach Blues Festival, for instance, will include the likes of James Brown, Chuck Berry and Irma Thomas.

But having Carlos Santana headline a blues bill is a bit like entering a floral arrangement in a barbecue cook-off.

The guitarist indeed topped the Blues Music Fest ’92 Sunday at the Pacific Amphitheatre, which also included B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Dr. John and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. There was some connection: Like nearly every rock guitarist to emerge from the late ‘60s, Santana owes a huge debt to King, whose 1966 “Live at the Regal” album became a generation’s one-stop dictionary of licks, attitude and technique. But the connection ends there: The Mexican-born guitarist’s band offers a decidedly non-bluesy, blissed-out mix of Latin and jazz fusion styles.

The dancing, near-capacity crowd didn’t much seem to mind if it wasn’t blues, perhaps because Santana was playing with a focus and vigor that recalled the sensational impact he had at Woodstock 23 years ago.

In the years between, he often could be faulted for excessive noodling and the self-righteous mood of his lyrics and onstage pronouncements. The rote “free everybody/isn’t enlightenment swell?” lyrics haven’t necessarily improved, but his soloing Sunday was informed with such a sensitivity and fire that it gave the impression that he knows of what he speaks, enlightenment-wise.

He’s fronting his hottest band in years. Members include long-time keyboardist Chester Thompson and locomotive drummer Walfredo Reyes, familiar to local audiences from his stint in David Lindley’s El Rayo-X. Reyes led a riotous three-man rhythm section that added a new level of heat to the boiling Afro-Cuban rhythms of the Woodstock-era workouts “Jingo” and “Soul Sacrifice.” The band also featured singer Alex Ligertwood, the remarkable bassist Benny Rietveld, and Santana’s guitarist brother Jorge, who once led the group Malo.

Santana played some of the expected oldies, including “Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen,” “Oye Como Va” and the breathtaking instrumental “Europa,” but he reached the audience just as well with less familiar material from his most recent albums, “Milagro” and “Spirits Dancing in the Flesh.”

His melodic soloing had an expressive, voice-like quality during the latter album’s title track and “Somewhere in Heaven,” which was dedicated to the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, Miles Davis and Bill Graham.

As good as Santana was, the high point came when B.B. King joined him to jam on two numbers.

Santana isn’t always the most gracious of musical hosts. Instead of seeking some common musical ground, he launched into two of his own instrumentals, forcing King to play over unfamiliar chord changes. He did the same thing to Jimmy and Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Pacific four years ago, leaving them at a loss for what to play. But King proved remarkably more adept, mimicking bits of Santana’s playing while pouring in torrents of his own soulful style. It was quite a redemption for King, whose own set had been atypically weak. Usually, the 66-year-old giant puts his all into a show, playing with a tremendous passion and invention. Sunday, he apparently was ailing, letting his band play a third of the set before he appeared, looking discomfited, and with his roaring voice clearly straining.

His playing was as beautiful as ever, though, from his standards “Rock Me Baby” and “The Thrill Is Gone” to his contemporary dance-groove “Back in L.A.” And, as usual, his exultant encore of U2’s “When Love Comes to Town” was a lesson in emotion.

From a blues purist’s standpoint, Buddy Guy does everything wrong. His scatter-brained approach rarely gives a song its due; he’s a nonstop showoff, and his distorted tone and overplaying could give one the impression that the blues were invented by skinny Englishmen with fuzztones.

Despite all that, Guy remains a tremendous performer, playing with such personality that it overwhelms the showmanship.

Even when plunging through the crowd during “Knock on Wood,” his soloing spoke with a distinctive voice, and with a musical humor perhaps matched only by Jeff Beck.

Still, Guy is such a stylist that it’s a shame he always devotes so much of his performance to mimicking other guitarists. It’s briefly amusing that he can do caricatures of Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, but who needs to hear him imitate Eric Clapton when Clapton is only imitating Guy and others? Such was the case when Guy did Cream’s “Strange Brew,” a song that was purloined from the blues standard “Lawdy Mama,” which Guy himself had recorded years before Cream did, on Junior Wells’ “Hoodoo Man Blues” album (on which Guy used the great pseudonym “Friendly Chap”).

At a half-hour each, neither Dr. John’s nor the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ set was long enough to allow the musicians to build up steam.

Pianist Mac “Dr. John” Rebennack recently has been playing some of the most enlivened and musically satisfying performances of his long career, reminding listeners just how much New Orleans tradition was wrapped up in the psychedelic swamp rock he introduced in the ‘60s.

His hurried set Sunday did include two gems, the Professor Longhair classic “Big Chief” and his own murky masterpiece, “Walk on Gilded Splinters.” The latter tune was somewhat upstaged, however, by a featured snake dancer who got a little more intimate than most people would care to with a 7-foot albino boa.

One wishes the T-Birds all the arena exposure they can get, but the group sure is better playing in bars. Despite front man Kim Wilson’s virtuosity on harmonica, the T-Birds are best as a dance band. And while former co-leader Jimmy Vaughan’s replacement, Duke Robillard, is a fine guitarist, the nonchalant excellence of Vaughan’s lean riffs clearly was the heart of this band.