Hart Of The Matter

MUSIC IS always an adventure, claims Alvin Youngblood Hart. And he should know. Raised in the San Francisco suburb of Oakland, and genetically-primed by a dose of Mississippi DNA (on both sides of the family), young Mister Hart has already chalked up more than his share of adventures. And contrary to some of the great blues meisters, he hasn't waited till old age to produce some mighty fine toons.

Hart's already put out two fine albums, Big Mama's Door And Territory and judging by the sheer spirit, it's looking like he might just be the 1998 Guinness Blues Festival's answer to last year's overnight sensation, Eric Bibb.

Doubtless he would scarcely be impressed by such comparisons. After all, this is a man who's hellbent on defying expectations, jettisoning any notions that an artist should confine himself to any one genre. 1995's Big Mama's Door was a coolly confident acoustic blues debut that reeked of a history and love of the music of the south. This year's altogether more eclectic Territory is a horse of a very different colour: country, blues, honky-tonk and western swing all shimmy alongside one another without a whit of shuffling discomfort. So you could say that Alvin Youngblood Hart is no colour-by-numbers blues balladeer.

"I guess I was fortunate growing up," he offers tentatively, his voice gently accented with just a tincture of the southern States, "that my parents liked to return to Mississippi every three years or so. That gave me a chance to get to know this soul music which is very dear to me and my family. Just being with my elders, learning to ride horses, all of that stuff meant a lot to me. It gave me a spiritual feeling for the music, I believe."

Although Youngblood Hart identifies first and foremost with his Southern genes, he's quick to point out that his genepool's not so pure as to exclude the odd element from pastures green.

"Actually, my father's part Irish too," he remarks, with a touch of nonchalance. "Then again, they say that a third of the American population has some Irish in them, so I guess some of them got to Mississippi at some stage."

Even more surprisingly, Hart's had considerable exposure to many things Irish, so his expectations are a little more honed than one would expect from an African-American purveyor of acoustic blues.

"One thing about America is that Irish folk music has been pretty strong, especially in the last 10 years or so," he says. "Actually, the fact of the matter is that I'm a huge Thin Lizzy fan and I've been trying to figure out which Lizzy songs I will sing when I come to Ireland."

Evidently Hart's absorbed the fine art of outfoxing his listeners already. His impending first trip to Dublin will probably just

copperfasten his cute hoor instincts thoroughly. Seriously, though, what is it that makes a whipper-snapper like him go

boldly where so few have gone before? A debut album that sways across the deltas of acoustic blues is one thing. A follow-up that refuses to stay on the same path and samples everything form Zappa to Roy Rogers, Captain Beefheart and Rudy Vallee is quite another.

While Big Mama's Door set him on the road to something special, Territory has taken Hart into the realm of inspired thinking that's rarely frequented by terrestrial singer/songwriters. His biggest hurdle in recording the second album was in choosing to ignore the distinctions of genre which corral blues from folk to country, an achievement of particular merit in the US, where radio airplay is so crassly defined according to the album's music category as dictated by the record company.

"All it boils down to in the end is the song," Hart explains. "And I guess that the mix of different styles that you hear on the album is me giving a big middle finger to the recording industry which tries to categorise people and coerce them into targeting particular audiences. The thing is that I don't really care so much about record companies. As long as I'm out playing my music to people who want to hear it . . ."

Having served his apprenticeship listening to and playing with some of the best urban blues players in Chicago's Maxwell Street, Hart gave up on his musical career for a period of seven years, his despondence at his lack of success ushering him into joining the US Coastguard in 1986. Somehow the US government saw to it that Hart wasn't let go to pasture completely, stationing him on a riverboat by the name of Natchez.

His tours of duty took him to just the right kind of spit 'n' sawdust places where his music was appreciated. Muddy Waters, Wilson Pickett and John Lee Hooker shared space with Hart's own material in his repertoire, and the confidence he gained playing down South led to him relocating to the San Francisco Bay area after his tour of duty was over.

And then came Big Mama's Door, It was showered with accolades: on the 1997 Living Blues Critics Poll Awards, it was voted Best Blues Album, Best Debut Album and Best Traditional Album of the Year. Hart was none too impressed by the blue riband trappings though.

"It's nice to be appreciated, I guess," he offers, "but I thought it should've got a lot more too! Once people are listening to the music, that's what really matters."

It's funny how, listening to Territory, it seems that the same hoary old lyrical chestnuts (women, men, drinkin' 'n' lonesome tales) crop up time and again. It's as though writers' preoccupations today are no different to those of songwriters 40-50 years ago. Territory's opening track, 'Tallacatcha', is a case in point. The title, a Choctaw word meaning "river of pearl" came out of years of listening to Roy Rogers and Bob Wills records, according to Hart.

"Yeah, that's a song that was floating around in my head for quite a while," Hart explains. "I had the melody but the lyrics took a little longer. So things like "river of pearl" came easily but "spent my day rakin' hay" came from time I spent doing just that with my father-in-law in Switzerland."

Well, bet you never thought you'd hear a western swing toon with roots in the alpine slopes of Switzerland . . . Hart's certainly not a man given to following known musical routes. A boon for any punter on the look-out for some fresh blood at this year's Guinness Blues Festival. Y'all come back now, y'hear? n