Working with the Wolf - Dave Kelly remembers

Dave Kelly is best known as a stalwart of the Blues Band, and one of Britain's leading slide guitarists.  But at the tender age of 22 he was a member of the John Dummer Blues Band when they got the gig to back Howlin’ Wolf on his May ’69 UK tour.  Before his recent gig in Edinburgh with Paul Jones he recalled the experience of that tour.

“We’d already done one tour with John Lee Hooker, and we were asked if we’d like to back Howlin’ Wolf and we said we’d absolutely love to – even though we never got paid! 

The Wolf - moaning' at midnight

“We loved his music.  You know, he had so many songs, not just 12 bars, things that needed arrangements and needed rehearsed – and we never got to rehearse with him.  The day before the first gig in Sunderland, we’d set up above the Roebuck pub in Tottenham Court Road, and Wolf came in with Roy Tempest the tour manager.  He shook hands with everyone, and told us to play some blues, which we did.  We went two or three times around, and he said “Fine.”  He said “Play me a shuffle beat.”  So we did that, and he turned to Roy Tempest and said “They’re fine,” – and that was it.

“He never told us what he was going to play, he never told us what key – he’d give us a count, and we’d start.  Over the two and half weeks, mostly things were in the same key that he’d done them the night before.  One night at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, he started the riff for 'Somebody Walking In My Home'.  So John Dummer comes in on drums, we all start playing that riff, and then the Wolf goes “Whoa-oh, Smokestack Lightnin’” – he just changed the song, it was wonderful!

“His voice was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.  The best gig was the City of London Polytechnic in the West End, where everybody turned up, there were loads of faces, an enormous crowd turned out.  That was in the first week, and he just . . . tore it up.  Crawling around the stage on all fours, lying on his back and howling – he put on such a show.  Another great one was the El Rondo in Leicester, which was quite late on, and he’d spoken to his wife on the phone and I think he was feeling homesick.  And he sang 'I Hurt Your Feelings, I Didn’t Mean To Do You No Wrong' [aka 'Tell Me What I’ve Done'].  There were a lot of young people there, a lot of students, and he had them sit down on the floor, and he went amongst them, and went down and sang on one knee, and it was so intense.  You know, missing his wife, and then he did that and just poured it all out.

Dave Kelly - British slide guru

“He was a powerful man, and a powerful singer.  I don’t know how often he wore out his harmonicas, but a hell of a lot of air went through them!  A big man, big lungs, and he used them.  Of course we didn’t have monitors in those days, it was just the PA.  So he said “Put those speakers behind me so I can hear you.”  We had to be careful with feedback, so we got them sort of in between, in front of us.  So he wasn’t as loud to us as out front, though we could hear him.

“It was a pleasure to back him.  It kept you on your toes, because you didn’t know what song he was going to do, or what key he was going to be in – it was a great learning curve, a pleasure and an honour.”

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Dave Kelly’s latest album, Solo Performances: Live in Germany 1986 to 1989 is out now via Hypertension.

Paul Jones and Dave Kelly - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 20 January 2016

Paul Jones and Dave Kelly have been at this game a long time – and it shows.  I mean this in a good way, of course.  As they progress through this  set comprising a wide range of blues classics, and a few originals, it’s apparent that musically they can read each other like a book.  Their playing dovetails with an impeccable sense of timing throughout, as they back each other up and trade off each other.

Dave Kelly - slide supremo

They trade the lead vocals on songs throughout the set, and occasionally do a solo number, and it’s worth saying that while Paul Jones may have the more celebrated history as a singer, Dave Kelly more than justifies the co-vocalist billing that he has with the Blues Band.  This first comes to the fore on ‘When The Levee Breaks’, where he delivers a strong and expressive vocal to match his ringing guitar and the neat injections of harp from his partner in crime.

Jones, meanwhile, introduces songs with a nice line in patter and plenty insight into blues history, as on ‘Noah Lewis Blues’, which he explains is a tribute to his favourite acoustic harp player.  It’s got a spare sound, notwithstanding Kelly picking up a Strat to add a strutting guitar riff that leans on the bass strings.

Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Dust My Blues’ is an early highlight – a song that, as Kelly explains, he actually played with the Wolf every night on a UK tour way back when.  It features impressive interaction between the two of them as they give it an extended workout, Jones contributing a great harp solo, while Kelly delivers some walking bass patterns alternating with twanging slide – something of a dress rehearsal for the terrific slide segment he produces on the following ‘Crossroads Blues’.

‘Sit Back Down’, from Jones’s latest solo album Suddenly I Like It, is a rollicking piece of R&B, with rolling bass lines from Kelly on his Strat, and an enjoyable call and response segment between slide guitar and harp.  They take a decidedly different turn though, with

Paul Jones gets reflective

Skip James’ ‘Hard Times Killin’ Floor’, which features intricate, sombre guitar underpinned by subdued harp.  It also showcases one of Kelly’s best vocals of the night, weary and sensitive.

Paul Jones introduces ‘Sonny Boy Williamson’ with plenty of detail about the Sonny Boy song, ‘Mighty Long Time’, displaying a fine sense of the ridiculous as he recounts its history.  He then adorns the song with some delightful falsetto moments – as well as a ‘hands free’ harp solo with the instrument lengthways in his mouth, cigar-style, in the finest tradition of some of the harmonica greats.

The Nat Adderley tune ‘Work Song’ is another peak.  With its jazzy feel it’s one of those tunes that whether you’ve heard it before or not, has a nagging sense of familiarity.  Jones invests some drama into the performance, as a reminder that he’s done some time in musical theatre in the past, as well as belting out some wailing, squawking harp.

They close with Muddy Waters’ reliably rocking ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’, and encore with Jimmy

John Alexander gets atmospheric

Reed’s ‘You Got Me Running’, into which they neatly insert a slice of ‘Bright Lights, Big City’.  It serves to demonstrate how well they swing – as if they haven’t done so already – and also shows off how well they harmonise vocally.

As an exhibition of what a guitar and a harp can deliver together when in the right hands, accompanying some time-served high quality blues voices, this was a gem.

Opening for the evening was Glasgow’s John Alexander, who made a positive impression with a beautifully full and warm acoustic sound and a slightly husky voice.  Songs like ‘Piece Of My Skin’ showed off his way with guitar lines that took interesting turns with a well-structured framework.  ‘Dangerous Wind’ offered a simple vocal melody balanced with rolling guitar runs and some moments of sharp punctuation.  The slightly Western feel of ‘Seven Cold Curses’, meanwhile, was atmospheric, suspenseful, and shimmering.  All in all a set that hinted at influences without being beholden to them – suggesting his album Rain For Sale may be well worth a listen.