It's not often that you run across a Blues musician who writes as many instrumental numbers as he does songs. That seems to be especially true of guitar players as those instrumentals that have been written in the genre seem to have been predominately for piano. Perhaps it's because of the tradition of instrumental pieces for piano predates the Blues with Ragtime, or simply because the 88 keys on the piano allows for a diversity of sound that a guitar just can't match.
Whatever the reason, you don't often see and hear what's on offer on Dave Specter's latest releases on Delmark Records, Dave Specter Live In Chicago. Available in both DVD and CD format, Live In Chicago was shot and recorded over two nights in August 2007 during performances at two of Chicago's renowned Blues bars; Rosa's Blues Lounge on Aug 20, 2007 and Buddy Guy's Legends on the 21st.
Each night saw Dave and his band of Marty Binder on drums, Brother John Kottke on Keyboards, and Harlan Terson on bass being joined by guest vocalists. At Buddy Guy's they were joined by singer/harmonica player Tad Robinson and the great Jimmy Johnson, while the night before over at Rosa's, Sharon Lewis came out to handle the singing chores. On top of offering up some dandy instrumental pieces of his own composition, Dave showed his versatility by being equally at home with each of his guests and their individual styles.
The disc opens with quite a long instrumental, a medley of two Specter tunes "Boss Funk/Riverside Drive," that clocks it at close to eight minutes. Quite remarkably you don't notice the length of the piece as Dave and the band show themselves to have a deft hand with melody and beat. It could very easily have become an exercise in tedium if they had let themselves get sucked into the seductive Funk rhythm, but Dave not only performed a variety of solos throughout the piece, each time he came back to the main melody he'd make some subtle alterations that would change it up to sustain our interest.
His first guest, Tad Robinson sang three of his own compositions and accompanied himself on harmonica, I'm not sure whether I liked his style of music all that much, but there was no denying either his talent on the harmonica or his ability to sing. It's just that I found his music lacked the intensity that I prefer from the Blues. Of the three tracks he performed, his cover of Tom T. Hall's ,"How I Got To Memphis" was the most interesting. Very much a Country Blues song, it seemed to inspire a little more passion in Tad, which made for better performances all round.
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