Out of the Loop

Long before Orange County had its swing revival, it had Junior Watson.

Let’s never suggest that zoot suits aren’t crucial to the music, but guitarist Watson concentrates on the notes, swinging more wildly in a 12-bar solo than the revival’s collective watch chains would if sent careening on a roller coaster.

In Europe and other far-flung locales, Watson is often hailed as the greatest living exponent of the swing-infused West Coast jump blues pioneered by T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s. Born in San Jose, Watson honed his craft in the San Francisco Bay Area, backing the likes of Lowell Fulsom, Big Mama Thornton, Luther Tucker and George “Harmonica” Smith.

When he moved to Orange County in the late 1970s, he tore clubs up with the Mighty Flyers; gave a spark to Canned Heat; recorded and toured with Charlie Musselwhite, Lynwood Slim and the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Kim Wilson; and had a solo venture or two, resulting in 1993’s rollicking “Long Overdue” album.

Most of this was accomplished in relative obscurity on the home front. And now that the music he’s championed for decades is the hot flavor of the day, Watson finds he’s still working in obscurity.

“This swing thing really hasn’t expanded my audience,” he said. “The people in that scene expect you to do that exclusively, with a real limited conception of what the music is, and wearing the right uniform. There are some real good bands out there, but there are also ones that are a real crock . . . with musicians who don’t have a clue and vocalists who are rotten to the core. It’s like they’re the Archies and we’re Scatman Crothers, except we’re alive.”

Watson is more bemused than bitter, saying he resigned himself years ago to a life of playing nightclubs, with annual festival gigs in Europe being career perks rather than the norm. He also hasn’t done much to promote himself, saying he has no stomach for the paperwork, personnel problems and other bothers of leading his own band.

Instead, he spent much of the last decade joining and quitting Canned Heat--most recently exiting for the last time earlier this year. “The validity of the band was demolished when [founding guitarist] Henry Vestine died,” Watson said.

Though billed as Junior Watson and the West Coast Playboys, the band is led by singer and harp player Andy Santana. That leaves Watson free to concentrate on the music, and a strange concentration it is. A Watson solo, if one might paraphrase Muhammad Ali, floats like a butterfly and bites like a drunken raccoon.

Like Louis Armstrong, Jeff Beck and far too few other musicians, Watson brings a sense of adventure to every solo he undertakes. While always emotionally direct, his guitar forays are technically beguiling, with complex harmonic structures and an elastic melodic logic that often threatens to catapult into chaos.

So what is Watson thinking when he’s playing?

“It’s just a fluid blur,” he said with a laugh. “That’s when it’s going right. I’m not even aware of where it’s going or where it’s coming from. Other times, you have to work at it. . . . There’s so much bad stuff out there, so many blues shows on the radio playing a sea of mediocre drool, that you really have to work to remind people of how vital the music is.”

Watson has been hooked on blues ever since he bought a Lightnin’ Slim record at a garage sale when he was 12. In the waning days of the San Jose coffeehouse scene, he got to see artists such as Bukka White, Mance Lipscomb and Son House.

When the Fillmore fired up in San Francisco in the late 1960s, Watson saw founding bluesmen such as B.B. and Albert King as well as the new British wave of players there. He maintains that the most thrilling night of music he ever saw was one Fillmore occasion when Buddy Guy and Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green jousted with their guitars. In 1968, Watson started playing professionally with a band called Double Trouble, taking its name from the same Otis Rush song that Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band covered years later. Before long, he was being called up to accompany the artists he’d grown up hearing.

In the late 1970s, he moved to Orange County and joined the Mighty Flyers, which along with the James Harman Band became the prime Southland blues outfits. There wasn’t a blues scene in Orange County at the time, but they created one, winning fans while playing trendy singles spots.

“The amazing thing about it was that we got a crowd that had never been exposed to blues before to listen. You couldn’t find a less likely blues venue than the Red Onion on Newport Bay in 1977, with girls in bikinis and high heels watching us. But we’d tear the place up because the music reached them. The venues had been so over-saturated with top 40 music that the people there were open to anything new.”

Watson became friends with Santa Cruz-based Santana in 1971. After he quit Canned Heat in February, he played some dates with Santana and his West Coast Playboys, which is rounded out by guitarist Curtis Smith, bassist Kedar Roy and drummer Marty Dobson. They decided to officially join forces while Watson was guesting on the West Coast Playboys’ “Swingin’ Rockin’ Jumpin’ & Jivin’ ” album. While the disc smokes most other recent blues or swing albums, Watson said it’s but a suggestion of the point they’ve reached after playing together for a while.

“Andy’s a great singer, and the whole band is very good and open to new ideas. We’re doing rumbas, all sorts of different things now. I’m going nuts lately listening to Ernest Ranglin, the guitarist on the early Jamaican blue beat records. I’m still excited by music and still finding new corners to turn every night when I play. When that happens for you, it’s just better than anything,” he said.

* Junior Watson and the West Coast Playboys, Hop City Steakhouse & Blues, 1929 S. State College Blvd., Anaheim. Saturday at 9:30 p.m. $8. (714) 978-3700.