Mojo - The Music Magazine

MOJO's Tony Russell speaks in praise of Charlotte Street Blues...

IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE there's been a smart blues club in the heart of London. Ain't Nothin' But in Kingly Street is an agreeable little boîte, and the 100 Club in Oxford Street, on the occasions - not so common now - when it does present blues, can still give the old hand a reminiscent thrill, but neither would be your first choice if you wanted a night out with a hint of, shall we say, glitz. So it was intriguing to hear, back in June, that some quixotic entrepreneurs were opening a blues club - a blues-seven-nights-a-week club, yet - in Charlotte Street, just a few strides north of the restaurant strip. Seems like a dream, as the old bluesmen used to say.

Perhaps it's the location, perhaps it's the club's ambience, but it draws a young, stylish and good-looking constituency to match, and often outnumber, the grizzled veterans of several decades' blues gigs. Saturdays are the nights for major acts, some of whom have been the intriguingly undadlike John Lee Hooker Jr, zydeco princeling Dwayne Dopsie (son of Rockin'), Otis Taylor, John Mayall and Chicago blues band Mississippi Heat. The booking policy is nothing if not adventurous. The always fascinating Alvin Youngblood Hart drew a hearteningly large audience for a man not yet well enough known here.

But much of the CSB week is for British and Irish acts drawn from the up-and-coming pool, such as Simon McBride or Matt Schofield (who by now we should probably consider up-and-come) - or the entirely estimable Ian Siegal, Britain's most talented blues vocalist, who plays a rare solo gig there on September 5. That's tomorrow if you're reading this on day-of-posting.

It's early days yet and the sound balance isn't always satisfactory. As at so many venues, the desk seems not to recognise that blues are stories, not guitar solos with incidental vocals, and that it's the singer who should be foregrounded in the mix. It was a good night in this respect for Hooker Jr and his Waits-like narratives of urban angst; not so good for Hart's power-trio readings of songs from the album Motivational Speaker. But if the onstage Sturm und Drang gets to be a little oppressive, you can take a breather on the narrow streetside veranda, or a fallback position in the sofa-strewn basement.

I found consolation of another kind in the upstairs bar, where you're still within sight and earshot of the music but can plan a tasting itinerary through what must surely be London's longest list of bourbons, eighty-some of them, from workaday Wild Turkey to the sublime (if pricey) George T. Stagg.

I can't remember when I last heard blues in surroundings as peppy as these. Certainly not in this country. What I like about CSB is that it turns its back on the old whitewashed-cellar, room-over-the-pub aesthetic of past jazz and blues venues and presents the music with uptown style.

Future attractions include Son Of Dave (September 17), Chicago blues singer Katherine Davis (October 2) and The Yardbirds (November 20). Check this place out: there's nothing quite like it.

By Tony Russell

Pictured: Papa George

Charlotte St Blues, 74 Charlotte Street, London W1T 4QH; tel. 0207 580 0113.