Arts & Entertainment

Celebrating 50 Seminal Years, The Robert Cray Band Brings The Blues Back To The Tarrytown Music Hall

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Robert Cray (photo credit: Turner-Cray Inc. )

October 14, 2024

By W.B. King–

For more than 50 years, five-time Grammy award-winning American blues guitarist and singer Robert Cray has been searching for the sound—traveling the world chasing a musical muse that has taken on illustrious forms. A Georgia-born son of an Army officer, he grew accustomed to this type of wanderlust—the Cray’s moved around quite a bit, even spending time in Germany where, as a young boy, music first caught his notice.

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“We were told to go to bed at 7:30 and then we could hear my parents playing Chubby Checkers, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Ray Charles, B.B. King and then on Sundays, gospel music,” Cray told The Hudson Independent.

It was at the base’s PX (post exchange) that his parents procured albums by these historic artists. Music, he said, was a constant, enveloping their home. These inspirational tracks were played on what Cray explained was a “huge console system” that featured a radio, tape player and a spindle that held what seemed like to his young eyes “billions” of 45s.

When the family returned to America, they relocated to the Tacoma region of Washington state. Here Cray was struck by the sounds of a new type of music being beamed in by way of Liverpool. “That’s when The Beatles came out. Everybody got a guitar and so did I,” he shared. “I took lessons briefly and then joined other kids to learn stuff off the radio but always having that music I heard as a kid in the back of my head.”

Throughout most of the 1960s, Cray said that AM radio was refreshingly without genres or boundaries. From one song to the next, a station could play Bobby Womack, Jefferson Airplane, Burt Bacharach and then John Lee Hooker. “It was wide open until FM came around in the late 1960s and early 1970s—then music started to become more categorized and the blues kind of faded away except from college radio stations and special programming,” he noted.

At the time, Cray’s high school days were coming to an end and he, along with a group of like-minded friends, were seeking out and listening to blues artists like Buddy Guy, Magic Sam (Samuel Gene Maghett) and Hubert Sumlin. “We got into this blues bag and found the music we wanted to listen to in record bins, and we traded and borrowed records,” Cray said.

A Game Changing Gig

A form of music uniquely American, the blues rose up from the rural South after the Civil War and produced seminal artists, many of whose names were lost to history. There were others like Charley Patton, Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie and Robert Johnson who influenced the blues artists Cray and many of his cohorts favored. The British Invasion bands like The Beatles and The Kinks were among a generation of musical upstarts that derived their respective sounds from so many blues artists that came before them. The Rolling Stones, for example, took their name from a Muddy Waters’ song. These British acts also studied the works of artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

In many respects, Seattle’s own Jimi Hendrix—considered by many the greatest guitarist of all time—was singularly demonstrative of the American blues lineage. And while he paid homage to his musical forefathers, he also took the blues into a new realm.

“I saw Hendrix a couple of times in Seattle. He was already big but he came back [home] to play,” Cray reflected, adding that there was nothing like seeing him perform live.

When high school graduation came along in 1971, Hendrix had sadly passed the year before. This guitar master held a special affinity for Albert Collins, a Texas born blues artist who was 10 years his senior. It turns out Cray’s graduating class also thought highly of Collins.

“In the late 1960s, Albert Collins played a lot in the Pacific Northwest—a lot of the outdoor concerts,” Cray said. “It was cool—my high school class voted for Albert Collins to play our high school graduation, and I had the opportunity to speak to him then.”

By 1974, the Robert Cray Band was established playing a unique styling of soul, R&B, gospel, blues and rock-n-roll. Cray proved to be a standout player both on guitar and with his vocal abilities. While the band was busy making a name for itself playing in clubs and barrooms, three years after forming they were invited to perform at the San Francisco Blues Festival—a game changing gig.

“We played and got a really good write-up in the [San Francisco] Chronicle—we sort of freaked out when we saw the headline—and then we started backing up Albert [Collins] after that,” he said. The band also caught the attention of well-known blues producers Bruce Bromberg and Dennis Walker, which would further elevate their presence in the blues scene.

Brown-Eyed Handsome Man

Cray’s first album, Who’s Been Talkin’ (1980), featured original tunes as well as covers, including Willie Dixon’s “Too Many Cooks.” From here, his recording career had a few fits and starts—different record labels, but his guitar playing was always celebrated as was his vocals, with comparisons to Collins and B.B. King, respectively. Today, he tours with some of the same musicians featured on the album, including his good friend and founding band member Richard Cousins who plays bass.

When Strong Persuader was released in 1986, with largely the same producing and musical team, Cray would score a hit with “Smoking Gun,” but before experiencing this newfound fame, he received a call from Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. Richards wanted him to join a top-tier list of musicians filming a documentary celebrating Chuck Berry’s 60^th birthday, who many call the father of rock and roll.

“I was invited to be a part of it, and it was an honor for me. I met Eric Clapton before; I had met Keith and we all got together in St. Louis for rehearsals,” he shared. “We were in Keith’s room, and he had a mantle above the fireplace with a boombox. I went over to see the music Keith Richards was listening to.”

To Cray’s great surprise, he saw a cassette with the words “Strong Persuader” written on it. “I look over to him and said, ‘How did you get this—it’s not even out yet?” Richards replied with a smirk: “I’m a Rolling Stone, I got everything.”

The resulting film, Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, recorded at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, was released in 1987 and featured Richards, Clapton, Etta James, Steve Jordan, Bobby Keys Julian Lennon, and legendary pianist Johnnie Johnson, among others.

“It was great being on that set because Keith and Eric were in awe of Johnnie Johnson and Chuck Berry. Rehearsals were at Chuck Berry’s place—like a club house on his property.” Cray recalled. “On breaks, Johnnie and Chuck would play ‘Cottage for Sale’ and some old standards and Keith would join in, and he would play stuff I never saw him play before. It was killin’, man. These jams sessions were incredible.”

In the film, Cray performed on Berry’s hit “Roll Over Beethoven” and another tune that was even more special because it brought his life full circle. “The song ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ was a song I played on, and it was a song that my dad played all the time in our house. I pitched the song to them, and they said ‘great,’” he noted.

This wasn’t Cray’s first time on the silver screen. Years earlier, he and the band, while living in Eugene, Oregon, were offered a gig backing up a fictitious R&B group, Otis Day and the Knights, in Animal House (1978). Cray can be seen on bass in the now cult classic comedy.

After the great success of Strong Persuader, Cray went on to open for both Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones and later shared the stage with other luminaries like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

“I listen to all the people who have influenced me every so often because I hear stuff I never heard before. When I first listened to people like Howlin’ Wolf—you go back and say, ‘damn, his voice or that groove is out of this world—nobody does that. Then you put the whole package together and you want to pull your hair out—that stuff is so deep,” Cray shared.

“Guys like B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins are what my friend Richard Cousins calls, ‘statues,’” he said. “I’m a fan and an admirer and had the good fortune to be with these statues on stage,” Cray said.

Anything You Want

While working on the Berry documentary, Cray met producer Steve Jordan who he has since worked with on many albums over the years, including In My Soul (2014) and That’s What I Heard (2020). The latter features stirring soulful, grooving and introspective originals like “This Man,” and “Do it,” and choice covers like “My Baby Likes to Boogaloo” by Don Gardner that harkens back to Cray’s 1960s AM radio days.

“Steve is great in the studio because he really sets a mood and a feel. Normally, the first thing we do in going into the studio is we all get on our instruments and Steve might get on the guitar or drums and we just start playing,” Cray said. “What we are playing, nobody knows. We just play until everyone gets loose and warmed up and then we sit down and talk about what we want to do for that day.”

Cray’s approach to songwriting is varied, sometimes words come first or the melody, and often he is simply a conduit. “A lot of the time, it’s music first but then a story might pop in and take precedence—then there is the occasion where both hit at the same time,” Cray said, noting that he intends to return to the studio in early 2025 to work on new material.

“We did that on this record (What I Heard) when we did the first track, ‘Anything You Want.’ We played right off the top and everyone joined in and then finished up the lyrics a few minutes later,” he added. “That was it.”

This appreciation for improvisation and exploration is also reflected in the 20 albums he has recorded over his career as well as when he constructs set lists. When The Robert Cray Band returns to the Tarrytown Music Hall on October 25, he will be joined by Cousins as well as another longstanding member, Dover Weinberg on Hammond organs and keyboards. Newcomer George Sluppick, whose credits include playing with The Chris Robinson Brotherhood band, will be on drums.

On this tour, the band will pull from Cray’s career-spanning catalog—more than 50 songs will be in rotation. Each night will have a different approach. “We could go all the way back to the Bad Influence album to the current record,” Cray told The Hudson Independent. “It’s better for us and it’s better for the audience.”

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