No average Joe

Beard is For Real

by Don Fluckinger

The responsibilities of raising a family kept Joe Beard -- a blues guitar giant virtually unknown outside of musician circles -- from straying far from Rochester, New York. To hear Joe Beard, you had to go to him.

Saturday, he ventures into our neck of the woods to play at Chan's, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; it's a rare gig with some former members of Ronnie Earl's Broadcasters, including Bruce Katz, that band's extraordinary organist. Former Broadcasters Katz, Per Hanson, and Rod Carey back Beard up on his new AudioQuest album, For Real, along with harmonica veteran Jerry Portnoy and Woonsocket's favorite blues son Duke Robillard.

People did -- and still do -- go to Rochester to hear the blues. Though not spoken of by blues historians in the same breath as Chicago, Saint Louie, or Memphis, Rochester was a regular stop on the circuit for guys like Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, the electric Chicago blues pioneer who anchored bands for Memphis Slim and James Cotton. Joe Beard played on stage in Rochester with all of them.

During the 1940s, as he grew up in Ashland, Mississippi, Beard hung out with Matt Murphy and his brother Floyd, who also made a name for himself on the Chicago scene. In those days, Beard says, the Murphy boys were playing music, but it didn't interest him.

"It was a long time before I got into B.B. King. I knew him from back in 1949; I listened to him a lot back at that time. He used to play the club, two blocks away from where I lived, every Monday night . . . but [then] I was not interested in playing the guitar."

A few years later, Beard picked up the bass guitar and played R&B ("James Brown stuff, I could play it all") with Johnny Ellison, the soul man who penned the classic "Some Kind of Wonderful." The guitar came later, and many more years passed before he performed publicly on lead guitar; but he had been playing with the same man who taught Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters the blues: Son House, who happened to live next door when Beard moved to Rochester.

Son House not only showed Beard the ropes but also passed on the oral history of Delta blues of which he was a founder. Beard listened to his stories about Willie Brown, Charley Patton, and, of course, Robert Johnson. "He used to go on and on," Beard says. "But I didn't know who Son House was. I never knew what Son House was all about. He had told me all those stories before they came along and rediscovered him."

He also watched the master perform blues on the six-string. "I have recordings," Beard says, "tapes of him and I on the reel-to-reel that we just did in the living room. I still have those now." Blues fans can only dream about those tapes someday being released.

That influence can be heard on For Real, especially on his renditions of Lightnin' Hopkins' "Airplane Blues" and John Lee Hooker's "Dirty Groundhog," which Beard plays by himself and exposes his instinctive sense of blues rhythm on both vocals and guitar. The rest of the album is devoted to full-band blues and R&B, with interesting remakes and rearrangements of chestnuts like "See See Rider" and "The Things I Used To Do" as well as eight originals. The "old" Broadcasters, as they were with Ronnie Earl, are crisp and brilliant.

When Ellison formed his Soul Brothers Six group, Beard started doing his own thing, getting away from the R&B and moving into blues. During the week, he supported his family as an electrician; but on the weekends, he played neighborhood joints such as the K&T Tavern, Ruth 'N Irv's, and the Lopez Steak House -- and he still does. His regular band won't be coming to Woonsocket; those inclined to see them will have to go back home with Beard.

Of the musicians who play with Beard on For Real, Portnoy came into the fold first -- back in the early '70s, when he was in Muddy Waters' band. Robillard came next, running into Beard in Cambridge. With Earl and the Broadcasters, he recorded the 1996 CD Blues Union. By that time he'd established a solid reputation as a bluesman, even performing for President George Bush's inaugural ball.

A few times in his career, Beard has stepped out and gone on extended tours: with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and once with an all-star revue that included Lafayette Leake. He currently is in negotiations with a booking agent who could be sending the venerable 60-year-old out on the road.

"Everywhere you go somebody recognizes you," Beard says. "The record's really done well, and it's given me a lot of recognition that I wouldn't have without it."

Joe Beard performs at 8 p.m., September 12, at Chan's. Tickets are $10. Call (401) 765-1900.