As the song ends, the crowd erupts in yells and catcalls, whistles and wild applause. This scene could be reminiscent of Houston's blues heyday in the '50s and '60s, except that the audience is predominantly white and middle-aged rather than black.
Dapper singer Patrick Harris, who resembles a smaller version of Snoop Dogg, waits for the noise to subside. "We love you and the Big Easy," he gushes. "It's people like you and clubs like this that make Houston the hottest blues town in the country."
More whoops and hollers...but what? Hottest blues town in the country?
Oldest blues town in the country might be closer to the mark. A cluster of Houston musicians continue to draw healthy crowds to their monthly or even weekly gigs well into their 70s and even 80s. Although the domestic audience for blues and R&B of this vintage has all but dried up except in a few major cities, those who are able to withstand the rigors of international travel still play to healthy audiences at clubs and festivals in Europe.
Gaines is 77, a veteran of Little Richard and Bobby "Blue" Bland's touring bands, as well as the historic sessions at the late Don Robey's Fifth Ward label Duke/Peacock Records. Milton Hopkins, whose cousin Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins received Houston's very first blues-related Texas Historical Marker in Third Ward last year (nearly 30 years after his death), is also 77.
Clocking in at 72 or 73, depending on which day you ask him, is Marion "Little Joe" Washington, the pint-sized guitar dynamo who is the blues' de facto emissary to hipster Houston thanks to his Tuesday-night residency at Montrose bar Boondocks. Had the Houston Press been foolish enough even to ask veteran shouter Gloria Edwards's age, we would hardly reveal it here.
The reigning dean of Houston's blues scene, Texas Johnny Brown, is 83. "TJB," as most of his friends know him, wrote one of Bland's biggest hits, "Two Steps From the Blues," during his long Duke/Peacock tenure. A fit man and a sharp dresser who often wears a little beret onstage that makes him look like the King of Cool, the guitarist still plays long, blistering sets that include his own hit songs like the monumental "There Goes the Blues" as well as subtle covers of choice R&B plums such as Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine."
Brown's recent Big Easy gigs have been masterful, wall-to-wall with dancers flipping and twirling each other, some young enough to be his great-grandchildren. His Quality Blues Band of Little Joe Frenchwood (drums), William Hollis (keys) and Larry Evans (bass) comes from the ranks of longtime bluesmen who remain active, a smattering that also includes bandleaders Eugene Moody, Don Kesee and George Brown, pianist Pee Wee Stephens, guitarist Pops Stewart, and drummers Jackie Gray and Gilbert Labba.
Not surprisingly, the number of local bluesmen who have recently retired or semi-retired due to advanced age, illness, or both, continues to swell: Guitarist I.J. Gosey, pianist Earl Gilliam and the current dean emeritus of the Houston blues community, 97-year-old Big Walter "The Thunderbird" Price, who once hammered the piano keys with the force of a hundred Fats Dominos.
However, the generation that was nurtured by all these Houston greats, as well as the many who have passed away, is going strong: Vocal powerhouses Trudy Lynn, Diunna Greenleaf and Faye Robinson, and guitar whizzes Sherman Robertson and Leonard "Lowdown" Brown. Just not always in Houston — these are the performers who travel regularly, and figure much larger abroad than on their home turf.
"Trudy Lynn, who started out singing with Albert Collins when she was still in high school, is just Trudy here in town," says Houston Community College professor and local blues scholar Dr. Roger Wood. "But on the world stage, where she is Miss Trudy Lynn, she is a force to be reckoned with. The same goes for Diunna Greenleaf and Sherman Robertson. Those three are out there kicking ass in the world at large, but their gigs here are just treated as other blues gigs."
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That Wood, author of 2003's definitive Gulf Coast blues history Down in Houston, can even say such a thing is testament to the high degree of musicianship among Houston's players, who have continued honing their onstage skills well after others their age have settled into retirement. Unless it comes from a job they held down concurrent with their musical pursuits, there is no retirement pension and often no health insurance for musicians, which in turn goes a long way toward explaining why many continue to perform so late in life.
