Tender harp

Rod Piazza knows you have to stay original to be blue

by Don Fluckinger

Talk about your tough crowds. When Rod Piazza picked up the harmonica and started getting blues gigs in 1965, he was playing in Los Angeles, in Watts. To promote the shows, posters showed him and George "Harmonica" Smith, who cut his teeth playing with Muddy Waters. Under Piazza's image was the apology "He's white, but he's outta sight!" Having passed that trial by fire, Rod Piazza went on to tour with Willa Mae "Big Mama" Thornton and for a time was the only white artist signed to ABC's Bluesway label, which had Big Joe Turner, Otis Spann, and many other greats under contract.

Three decades and a half-dozen labels later, Piazza's restarted his career and is heading into Worcester to play Gilrein's next Wednesday and at Geraldine's, in Springfield, next Thursday. This month also marked another milestone, as Piazza won a W.C. Handy Award in the blues harmonica instrumentalist category -- he and his band, the Mighty Flyers, were nominated for a total of six awards this year.

Since those early days, Piazza's seen a great shift in blues fandom. In Watts, he played for "transplants, people from the South and everywhere else who had moved to LA; and blues was their music," he says. When they came down to the corner bar, Piazza, Smith, and the locals would play the blues music these transplants grew up with and loved. "Now you still have [black] people in the South who like the music but, predominantly at these shows, no matter who it is, they're playing for a white audience," Piazza says. "The migration was happening even before I was a player. It was happening to Muddy Waters when I was just barely gettin' gigs. He was already starting to lose the black audience, and was playing for a white college audience. That was '62, '61, '60. When I came along in '65, things had already been set on the course that they were traveling."

After recording for Bluesway, Piazza stayed around LA, raising children with his wife, Honey. He was invited to play with Muddy Waters on tour but declined when health problems kept him out of commission for several months. In the '90s, a rejuvenated Piazza hit the road with four pals who have played with him for years and formed a tight-sounding ensemble. Rick "L.A. Holmes" Holmstrom and Honey are in the band; she was also nominated for a Handy award on the strength of her boogie style. The band cycled through several different labels over the last few years, including Capricorn and Black Top.

In 1996, Piazza and the band settled with Tone-Cool, which released his most recent album, Tough and Tender. As far as his playing goes, Piazza's still outta sight, blowing hard in the West Coast swing style that to him seemed like a natural progression of the Chicago and Memphis blues of B.B. King and Waters. Right now, West Coast is trendy, but it wasn't always so easily accepted.

"I can remember going out in 1980," Piazza says, "and people looked at us and said, `What the hell is this? This ain't blues!' But things have really changed in that respect. To me, it's not out of the idiom, it's just a different twist on traditional blues."

Although only originals show up on the new album, Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers mix it up: about 75 percent originals, 25 percent covers of blues evergreens. Though there are "about a million" songs by other artists he'd love to cover, Piazza says that at this point in his career, he wants to release only original material.

Besides, with the passing of first-generation bluesmen like Luther Allison -- who pulled down many Handy Awards this year, posthumously -- he feels that only the blues players who come up with new material will make a name for themselves.

"I think if you have a solid background to draw on and you have creativity yourself, then you have something to say," Piazza says. "If you don't have any worthwhile new tunes, arrangements, or anything . . . just being an interpreter and redoing other people's songs and putting a couple of originals on a record, I don't think those people can carry the blues torch on."

His opinion means more than a little. After all, Rod Piazza has carried the blues torch himself since the days when most music fans didn't know the difference between Little Walter and Walter Cronkite. Now with this tour, a new album, and a Handy Award, he's set to make a little history himself.

Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers play at 8 p.m. on May 27 at Gilrein's. Tickets are $12. They also appear at 9 p.m. on May 28 at Geraldine's, in Springfield. For more information on the Gilrein's show, call 791-2583; for the Geraldine's show, call (413)736-3786.