BACKSTAGE PASS:

Go behind the scenes with staff writer Scott Dirks as he shares inside stories and additional details on the cutting room floor regarding Delta Groove artists and releases. This months article focuses on Frank "Paris Slim" Goldwasser and his brand new release "Bluju" available now!

It’s not all that unusual for a foreign blues player to come to the U.S. for a crash course in the music and the culture of the blues, doing their best to absorb some measure of the “real thing” before heading back to their homeland in Europe, Japan or South America with an added measure of authenticity on their resumes. It’s far less common for a non-native blues player to move to the U.S. and not only make his home here, but make a name for himself here as a genuine bluesman.

Frank “Paris Slim” Goldwasser is one of the few members of that latter exclusive club. With the unadulterated zeal of a true believer, he moved from his home inParis, France to Oakland, California on the invitation of Bay Area bluesman Sonny Rhodes, whom he’d met when Rhodes played in France. After arriving in Oakland, Goldwasser quickly fell in with the crew that played regularly at the legendary Eli’s Mile High Club, at the heart of the Oakland blues scene since the early 1970s. Before long he took over as the bandleader of the house band at Eli’s, and along the way played his guitar with a who’s who of Bay Area and west coast blues musicians, from legendary names such as Lowell Fulson and Percy Mayfield, through local favorites such as Troyce Key and JJ Malone, and everyone in between.

Frank has earned the highest respect of virtually every blues artist he’s played with, or who has played with him. He’s now spent over a quarter century in the U.S., released a series of excellent recordings both as a bandleader and a sideman and producer for other artists, and established a reputation as one of the most serious and committed bluesmen of his generation.

A few years ago, he and Randy Chortkoff joined forces to produce the CD “BLUJU”, which was initially released only in Europe. Now the CD will finally get the attention it deserves, with a wide release in the U.S. on Delta Groove. Goldwasser has created one of the most adventurous and interesting blues CDs to be released in some time, so I asked Frank what motivated him to stretch his creative wings on BLUJU, and here’s what he had to say:

“It occurred to me about the time we started talking about doing the CD - not that it was a big epiphany thing, but it was the first time I’d thought about it this way - I just realized that in the kind of music that we’re into, so much of it has already been recycled. It’s hard to play blues and not sound like a bunch of recycled clichés, yet it’s very hard to create music that’s still blues without recycling
some of the standard clichés. It occurred to me that for myself, the ONLY way I was going to be able to make any kind of personal statement was through songwriting. I have a good sense of where I’m at as a musician…I know there are lots of guys who might technically play or sing better. So the only way I was going to say anything worthwhile is through songwriting…so I put a gun to my own head, and said “write!”, and that’s what happened. I figured that it was the only way to do something that
was personal.

And I’m fairly pleased with the stuff I came up with. I wrote the kind of material that I enjoy. I wasn’t trying to be literary, or write anything with ‘a message’, but to write stuff from the gut level. As far as the writing is concerned, I wanted to get down to earth, as close to ground as I could. Then if I fall, I haven’t got far to go (laughs). So I wrote songs that were meaningful to me at the time. I didn’t plan it this way, but all the songs I wrote do have a common theme – they’re all songs about being lost and not having a home, and searching. I wrote about exactly what was on my mind. And I’m not embarrassed when I listen to those songs. Musically, I also kept it extremely simple, rudimentary even, harmonically speaking. I love the electrified Mississippi blues, the songs without changes, or changes only when it felt like it was time for a change. I was listening to a lot of that stuff at the time, and it showed up in the songs.”

Another element that shows up in a few of the songs was an even more distant influence: North African and Middle Eastern music. How did that find its way into his blues?

“When Randy [Chortkoff] and I started talking about doing a CD, I was listening to a lot of different music. I was listening to a lot of music from the middle east and near east, Arabic music, north African music. So we started talking about making this CD, and there was talk about putting me together with the usual guys from the west coast blues scene. I could have made another typical retro blues record, but I had no interest doing that. I didn’t want to make a conventional blues CD - I didn’t see the point of it. I knew we could make a good conventional record. I knew what it would sound like, I knew we could make a good CD, but I didn’t want to do that. I also didn’t want to record a bunch of covers, although that would be the safe way to go. At the risk of falling on my face, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew what I DIDN’T want to do, so I started writing, while listening to some of the things that appealed to me. And one of the things that found its way into a couple of songs was an Arabic influence in some of the rhythms.

Of course growing up in France, the middle eastern thing is much more familiar – it’s still foreign, but not as unusual [as it is here]. Something like 10% of the population of France is Arabic or Muslim, so it’s everywhere. It’s on the radio, on TV. Pop music there is commonly inflected with Arabic music.

So I didn’t use all the usual blues players on all of the sessions, and I have to give Randy credit for letting me use the players I wanted to use. And using some different guys on it gave it a different kind of energy, some different grooves. I went to the rehearsal and brought some CDs, and said ‘cop this groove...give me this groove, or that groove, don’t worry about the changes’. I’ve always liked the Mississippi one chord stuff, primitive stuff, and some of that happened to work well over an Arabic groove. But really most of the songs are more straight ahead blues, things like “Homesick Blues”. And I also wanted to use some of the guys I’d known and played with in Oakland. So Phillip Walker is on there, and JJ Malone. Of all the guys I’d known from that scene, JJ was the only one left, so I wanted to use him on the record…really, most of the record is pretty conventional, despite most of my efforts to make it not that way (laughs).”

“Conventional” may be in the ear of the beholder - BLUJU is one of the most interesting and personal records to find it’s way into the “blues” section in some time.

Written by Scott Dirks