It’s always interesting to see how musicians who’ve been successful on record come off live. The transition between bandstand and studio can be tricky, and some of our most important blues artists have had trouble with it. In some cases–Howlin’ Wolf comes to mind–an artist’s stage presence has an excitement or intensity that can’t be reproduced mechanically; you’ve got to experience the full force of the personality to appreciate the music. On the other hand, musicians whose abilities might falter in the heat of performance can benefit from the in-studio opportunity to work things out over several takes. Arthur “Big Boy” Spires, Otis “Big Smokey” Smothers, and the late Good Rockin’ Charles all fall into this latter group.
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Any time a band does one thing particularly well, there’s a danger that it’ll be pigeonholed for life. Little Charlie and the Nightcats seem determined to avoid this. They make it plain, in live performance, that there’s serious musical commitment beneath the good-timey surface. Guitarist Charlie Baty and his crew–harpist and vocalist Rick Estrin, new bassist Brad Lee Sexton, and drummer Dobie Strange–have forged a sound based on the breezy sophistication of postwar Texas blues and western swing. It’s given an added urgency by Estrin’s Chicago-style harp blowing and a complex rhythmic interplay between guitar, bass, and drums that elevates the concept of a rhythm section to an entirely new dimension. This band approaches rhythm work the same way a master jazz pianist like Earl “Fatha” Hines would use his left hand in a solo: to provide both propulsion and melodic elaboration on the ideas being developed in the treble registers.
That’s not to say that they don’t have a winning way with standards; at B.L.U.E.S. Etcetera, they galvanized the crowd with an unexpected but delightful romp on the jazz classic “Lester Leaps In,” featuring Baty’s crowd- pleasing guitar tricks (repeated riffs, fancy high-treble chords) interspersed with some truly awesome displays of technique and imagination. Strange and Sexton drove the number along in a rollicking shuffle-swing.
The jivey patter of Estrin, meanwhile, keeps the band’s well-known spirit of fun in the fore. Natty in dark glasses and affecting a modified early-Brando slouch, he intersperses his harp solos with introductions, comments, and asides that retain a good dose of the rock-and-roll irreverence that many others seem to consider either passe or somehow unseemly. He treads bravely into risky territory, as in his intro to “The Booty Song” (which he subtitled, “Honey, I Hate to See You Go, But That’s the Only Way I Get to See You Walk Away”).
It’s never easy to predict a band’s future; even an accomplished aggregation like Little Charlie and the Nightcats will have to keep evolving to meet the standards they’ve set for themselves. For one thing, a bit more attention to dynamics would help; music of this type sometimes calls for a variation in volume that rockabilly groups, for instance, can accomplish by using both acoustic and electric instruments. A solely electric band like the Nightcats might have to work a bit harder to pull it off.
