LEGENDARY RHYTHM & BLUES REVUE "COMMAND PERFORMANCE" Liner Notes by Brad Kava

There should be a sign posted over every blues jam in every club: DON’T GET UP IF YOU CAN’T GET DOWN!!!!

That was the behind-the-scenes logo that helped inspire the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue’s “Command Performance,” an electrifying live album by a new blues super group. Stacked like an old jukebox with a baker’s dozen songs, lots of long jams and superstar guests, this debut is a testament to the sustaining power of the soulful music to live on through generations. The band -- fronted by guitarists Tommy Castro and Ronnie Baker Brooks, pianist and horn player Deanna Bogart, and the master of the licking stick, Magic Dick, on harmonica-- got its start in the most unlikely place: a cruise ship in the sunny Caribbean.

They met during jam sessions on the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise, a twice-yearly event that brings 25 bands out to sea and lets them improvise and jam all night long. Inspired by what happened there, the four musicians toured the country by bus and skimmed the cream of the shows for this Delta Groove recording. Marin County guitarist and road warrior Tommy Castro says the long jams brought him back to the era of rock he most misses: when bands like the Allmans and Dead played till they dropped. "Some people might not think of it as being cool,” he says of the shipboard sessions. “But when you get on there and see how it is, these people are just stone blues fanatics, really into the music and partying their asses off the whole time.”

Castro shows landlubbers what he means on his ten minute jammer’s delight “High on the Hog,” where the fiery guitarist trades licks with Elvin Bishop, sax player Keith Crossan, and the rest of the band lines up to take their shots. His “If I Had a Nickel,” is an old chestnut that reminds fans of the days when he and Boz Scaggs were San Francisco’s finest.

For Deanna Bogart, who calls her mix of jazz and blues bluesion, the shows were like the old jazz jam sessions of the 1930s. “They went all night and one song would go three or four hours. If you repeated yourself you were gone and it was someone else’s turn.” Despite the title of her slinky “Still the Girl in the Band,” she is anything but. She jams on sax, keys and wails on the vocals all night long.

Magic Dick, whose harmonica playing inspired generations of new players as his J. Geils Band toured stadiums says “improvisation is what makes music come alive.” He had to improvise quickly on the “Whammer Jammer” recorded in Sacramento. His bullet microphone broke, so he played the song into the vocal mic, which gave a cleaner tone and shows fans that he really did all those tricks with his mouth, not the equipment.

Ronnie Baker Brooks learned more than a few tricks from the blues men who surrounded his father, Lonnie Brooks. One of them, Buddy Guy, always takes a wireless trip into the audience with his guitar. But the younger Brooks put a new spin on it this tour. During a wailing slide guitar solo, he walked through the audience and got behind the bar, poured himself a stiff mix of vodka and orange juice and gulped it down --without missing a note. “That’s one way to get a free drink,” he says. For those who may not have known his music before, the songs on this disc will be a revelation. On “Can’t You See” he sings like a sultry Eric Clapton and on “She’s Nineteen,” he plays guitar like Albert Collins. Can you ask for a better resume?

The result is a first class disc with a mix by John Porter that sounds as rich and full as a studio album, with all the whoops and hollers and spontaneity of a great live gig.

Blues aficionado Randy Chortkoff, who founded Delta Groove Music, cleared the hurdles to get these four musicians from different labels together on this. His goal is simple: to keep the blues alive you have to put out fresh new music, not just rewrite history.

For those who wonder what will happen to America’s native-born music when the Chicago and Mississippi masters die off, well, you are holding the future in your hands from a band that never has trouble getting up or getting down. And it sounds good. Real good.

-- Brad Kava