ROD PIAZZA "FOR THE CHOSEN WHO" Source: Hartford Advocate Date: 07/07/2005 Writer: Art Tipaldi

While most of the world in the 1960s was marching off to college campuses to study from books, Piazza committed to learning the blues in the tiny places where the music thrived by sitting in with the men and women who were its masters.

While others learned from professors in universities, Piazza sat with scholars of the blues. Day in and day out, he listened to professors of the real blues like George "Harmonica" Smith, Piazza's personal harmonica mentor.

"You can watch people play a guitar or piano, but you can't watch a harmonica player play. All you can see is his hands and his face, so it's harder to pick things up," says Piazza. In those early days, Smith would come up behind him and reach around with his arms and grab Rod's hands and squeeze them to show Piazza how to get the harp tones right.

"The tone in blues is the most important thing you need. It doesn't come right away. It's a development thing. Whether your tongue is on or off the harp, how you hold your hands affects your tone."

There were late-night field trips to ghetto blues jukes deep in the inner city where the smoke hung thick and you bought set-ups and ice for your pints. There he began playing at clubs in Watts like the Chantilly Lace Club, Small's Paradise, or Smokey Wilson's Pioneer Club, to an older black crowd that seemed to like Rod's blues.

"When I saw guys like Muddy Waters, George Smith, Big Mama Thornton and Howlin' Wolf, they were the giants," he says. "They could command this respect just walkin' up there before they played a note. To me, it seemed like if I ever wanted to be somebody, I had to learn how to do that. Before that, I thought I could just stand up there and play."

After more than 40 years and 21 recordings, Piazza has never compromised his blues. His newest record, For The Chosen Who released July 19 on Delta Groove Productions, is a return to the irresistible joy of those lively, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants days when all music had the energy to excite. There's enough deep blues tones to thrill every blues lover, but there are also soulful ballads, lively R&B, and even some hints of spirited gospel music. And there is a 20-minute in-studio DVD also included as a bonus.

"I was talking to a Mighty Flyers' audience and said, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, you are among the chosen who.' By that I mean those who have the ears to really hear and appreciate this soulful music and love it the way I do.'"

What's exciting are the special guests Piazza enlisted. In addition to his long-established, Mighty Flyer band, which includes two original members from 1976, his wife Honey Piazza on piano and Bill Stuve on bass, Piazza called in some veteran bluesmen to give the music a gritty, full-bodied seasoning.

"This new record has all the ingredients of a Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers CD with the augmentation of backup singers and a horn section. But it also has Phil Guy, Finis Tasby, and Johnny Dyer from the black blues community. That's the first time I've had that on a record. Whenever you play with different people, you slant your sound differently to work with what they're doing. Because these songs aren't known by these players, the recording becomes more of a spontaneous deal."

Spontaneity is exactly what you get at every show by this band of perennial W.C. Handy nominees for Band, Harmonica Player, Bass Player and Piano Player of the Year. "If you listen to my shows, you'll hear the home runs, but if you listen hard enough throughout the night, you are gonna hear some different tunes that you haven't heard before. What has made this band successful is learning to adjust to what the audience hears. What we mainly do is set the tempos and the groove to pace the show for each different audience.