POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rock, Soul Add Color to Blues Fest : Chuck Berry and James Brown led a bill of fresh as well as traditional artists. For the Long Beach event, it was the most impressive, ambitious yet.

Blues music may be the foundation for the American musical culture of this century and a powerful vehicle for personal expression, but those overworked three-chord changes also can be a damned bore when served up endlessly at blues fests. Fortunately, the 13th Annual Long Beach Blues Festival held Saturday and Sunday broadened its lineup with a refreshing infusion of blues-bred rock and soul music.

The fest, held at a new site--the city’s Shoreline Aquatic Park--was a balanced mix of traditional blues artists rarely seen on this coast (Chicago’s Snooky Pryor and Pinetop Perkins), fresh blues directions (singer-guitarist Joe Louis Walker), gospel (L.A. veterans the Mighty Clouds of Joy), soul music (Irma Thomas and Ruth Brown) and the singular pioneering music styles of headliners Chuck Berry and James Brown.

Ruth Brown also doubled as the show’s host, and if there was an artist she didn’t introduce as “a living legend,” we missed it. By the time she got to the headliners like Berry, she had to up the ante to say “a true living legend.” In performance, a couple of the acts were more limping legends than living, but the bill still added up to the most impressive and ambitious Long Beach fest yet. It was presented by Long Beach listener-supported jazz station KLON-FM (88.1) and produced by the station’s Ken Poston.

“I’m still me!” declared Saturday’s headliner Chuck Berry after his first number, and truer words were never spoken. Berry is one of the greatest poets America ever produced--Walt Whitman could only wish he’d wrote “Riding along in my calaboose / Still trying to get her belt unloose”--practically invented rock guitar and, nearly four decades after “Maybellene” hit in 1955, he remains one of rock’s most individualistic and abandoned performers. Of his generation, only Jerry Lee Lewis is as feisty and unpredictable.

Attired in vintage bell-bottoms and the only shirt in show biz louder than those worn by Garth Brooks, Berry sauntered, slithered and duck-walked about the stage in an uncharacteristically long one-hour set.

As ever, his guitar was so incredibly out of tune that his backing musicians often could only guess what key, or even universe, he was in. But such a blunt instrument is evidently all Berry needs to knock out an audience. He had the crowd dancing and shouting through his American beauties such as “Rock and Roll Music,” “School Days,” “Let It Rock,” “Memphis” and “Johnny B. Goode.”

Berry also threw in a few blues numbers, including “Every Day I Have the Blues,” and “It Hurts Me Too,” which he approached on his guitar with his usual careless brilliance. Perhaps because Keith Richards and thousand of other acolytes have mastered note-perfect versions of his trademark guitar riffs, Berry feels no need to get them right, and instead will fly off into an out-of-tune train wreck of a solo. Miraculously he still manages to make them rock and entertain.

While Berry can be an indifferent performer, there was no question going in that he still has the ability to put on a good show--a far less certain proposition with James Brown, Sunday’s headliner. The one-time “hardest working man in show business” was a lifeless zombie on stage the last time this writer saw him perform, back before his much-publicized incarceration in 1988.

For that show, Brown came on stage an hour late, and acted as if the barest suggestion of doing something was the same as doing it. He’d step up to the mike as if he was about to sing a song and never do it; he’d move a leg and then never start to dance; and where he once would drop his microphone stand, swing about and drop to his knees to catch it, at this show he’d just let the mike fall to the floor with a thud.

Brown’s band was nearly an hour late again Sunday, and the man himself didn’t appear until after another 20 minutes of nonsense--the crowd at this point was not especially in the mood to hear his backup singers warble through “The Way We Were.” But Soul Brother No. 1 proved to be well worth the wait.

Brown’s 70-minute show was so hot that it might be a good idea to throw Michael Bolton in the slammer for three or four decades to see if that can make him sing with some real feeling. Parts of the show were pure hokum and show biz--including rote tributes to dead stars and dancing girls whose batons sprouted American flags at the close of “Living in America”--but Brown also really sang --whole songs even, not just the bite-sized medleys he used to dish out.

Fronting a burning, incredibly precise band, Brown was in total control and beaming with satisfaction as he tore into “Cold Sweat,” “Prisoner of Love,” “Hot Pants” “Try Me,” “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” “Please Please Please” and other songs that changed the shape of American popular music. He even did an epic, if somewhat meandering version, of the classic “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World”--including the knee-bruising mike-catching trick--and closed his set with a version of “Sex Machine” that had him screaming, dancing, jumping and being James Brown as only he can.

The other stellar performance of the fest came from New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas, whose voice remarkably just gets better with time. All the hope and pain that went into her teen-age early-’60s hits such as “Wish Someone Would Care” and “It’s Raining” were only deepened by the mature, soulful voice she brought to bear on them Saturday. She got the crowd up, dancing and waving napkins in the air in a New Orleans “second line” as she sang the Crescent City classics “Iko-Iko” and “Hey Pocky Way.”

Thomas’ voice has few peers, and regrettably one of them, Etta James, canceled her scheduled Sunday appearance because of illness. Ruth Brown filled in for James, belting out a set of standards and her ‘50s R & B hits.

The Bay Area’s Joe Louis Walker shot his blues full of Stax-label Southern soul and inventive song structures, making for a charged Saturday set. While he has a solid command of traditional blues styles, Walker also mixed in some hot Memphis soul on his “Hot Tamale Baby” and “Personal Baby.”

Rounding out the Saturday lineup was 77-year-old Chicago stalwart Honeyboy Edwards, who offered a relaxed solo set of back-porch blues, and the Popa Chubby Band, a tight but decidedly unoriginal young outfit from New York that had won the fest’s National Talent Search.

Sunday opened with a rousing set from the Mighty Clouds of Joy, whose driving gospel vocals had the packed crowd starting the day on its feet.

Chicago pianist Sunnyland Slim also canceled because of illness, although his band appeared, with fellow Chi-town keyboardist Pinetop Perkins filling in. Perkins has backed Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker and others, and he was joined in his set by fellow Waters’ band vet Hubert Sumlin, who chiefly distinguished himself on guitar on Howlin’ Wolf’s great Chess recordings.

Although such artists deserve respect and recompense for their contributions--Eric Clapton’s wheezy guitar tone and several of his licks, for example, were pioneered by Sumlin--they aren’t necessarily dynamic performers. Harmonica player Snooky Pryor was far more effective in his performance, where, joined by guitarist John Nicholas, he turned in a jumping set driven by his snorting harmonica and big voice, which had a slight Sunny Boy Williamson quaver to it.

Up to a point, the Shoreline Aquatic Park was an ideal locale for the fest. Overlooking Long Beach harbor, it was both scenic and offered an ocean breeze to ameliorate the heat (things were even spiced up by an offshore fireworks display Sunday). But it got mighty packed Sunday, when there were some 5,000 more fans than the KLON-estimated 7,000 who showed up Saturday. No provision was made for pedestrian lanes through the crowd, and it was a real effort for many to make it to restrooms or food stands.

As with the last couple of fests, a large area was cordoned off for “Gold Pass” members--KLON supporters who donate $250 or more. Although it’s an effective, and these days perhaps even necessary, way for the station to get needed funds, it also seems a curiously elitist way to run a festival of a music style that emerged from the impoverished quarters of America. The majority of fans who paid $25 to attend found they weren’t allowed within Frisbee distance of the stage, which led to a bit of friction Sunday as fans tried to get closer for James Brown’s performance.

One final small beef with what was overall an excellently programmed event: Between acts, the sound system carried KLON broadcasts featuring recordings of the fest’s artists, in some cases even large chunks of their live albums. Hence, when the artist finally performed, some of the thunder was stolen because the same songs--with canned applause even--had already been heard.