Beating the Beast

Pennsylvania guitarist Clarence Spady survives personal demons and troubled relationships to become a bluesman for the next century.

by Mark Jordan

n the title track to his debut CD, 1996’s Nature Of The Beast, Pennsylvania bluesman Clarence Spady sings with unflinching honesty about a “devil up my nose.”

“I got out there with coke a little bit,” Spady admits today. “It got to a point where when I wasn’t gigging, I was just running around. I’d finish a show and then not come home for three or four days. It just wasn’t good. It wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t good for my creativity. It wasn’t good for my spirits.”

Clarence Spady’s debut CD, Nature Of The Beast, earned him a best new artist Handy Award nomination and a spot on Living Blues’ Top 40 Blues Artists Under 40 list.

As destructive as his behaviour may have been to himself, however, Spady knew he had really hit bottom when his problem began to affect his family life.

“I did the ultimate no-no,” he recalls of that Christmas more than two years ago. “I didn’t give anyone any gifts that year even though they were purchased. The impulse just took me over. It was like, I know I want this [cocaine]. I have a couch full of gifts. I’ll just take one of them back. And then as I was closing the door, I was like, why take one back; take all of them back. So I started looking for receipts, and, after that, I said that’s it. … I didn’t even go by the house Christmas day because I didn’t want to see [my son’s] face from me not being there and not seeing anything under the tree.”

Spady checked himself into rehab and emerged 30 days later with a fresh perspective and a mountain of material to be mined. Today, he seems to have not just recovered from addiction but recovered beautifully. Nature of the Beast, a highly personal soul-blues album inspired by his addiction, divorce, and myriad other crises, earned the guitar player a Handy Award nomination for Best New Blues Artist upon its release, as well as a spot on Living Blues magazine’s Top 40 Blues Artists Under 40 list. He has catapulted to the ranks of compatriot young bluesmen such as Robert Cray and Keb’ Mo’, who, like him, merge the tradition of the blues with other genres – soul, funk, R&B. And he keeps busy playing well more than 150 dates a year.

Spady’s story of tragedy, redemption, and triumph is worthy of any bluesman, but it is all the more remarkable for one who hails from one of the unlikeliest of places – Scranton, Pennsylvania. Spady still lives in the small city of 80,000 so that he can be near the two most important people in his life – his father and his son.

Growing up, the sound of Scranton was overwhelmingly pop and top 40. But young Spady, who first picked up the guitar at the age of 4, got a healthy diet of the blues at home. Mom listened to gospel and often took her son to visit her native New Jersey, where he was exposed to the area’s rich radio diversity.

But it was dad – who taught Spady how to play guitar and who, until a spate of recent health problems, attended all his son’s shows – who was Spady’s greatest influence.

“He used to listen to Bobby Bland and B.B. King at home. And at night he’d sit on the porch playing guitar. I’d climb in his lap, and start fingering the notes while he did the picking,” Spady remembers. “And we used to have blues jams every weekend. [Dad] would get off work on Friday at 5 p.m., 5:30 p.m., and we’d head out Highway 80 east toward Patterson to my uncle’s place. The jam would start Friday night and end Sunday morning. Sometimes we’d be on our way home and just make it back in time for church. And we did that for 14 years, every weekend. That was the biggest exposure to the blues that I had when was young.”

On his own, Spady developed a taste for soul and funk, influences readily apparent in his music, which marries traditional blues sound with a funkier, modern sensibility. He says his next album, due out next year, will lean more in the R&B direction, with plenty of horns and vocal harmonies.

“I guess that comes from listening to James Brown and growing up in the era of Motown,” he says. “It seems like my rhythm would go with the R&B, but my solos would stay mostly bluesy.”

While traditionalists might recoil, even outright reject the modern touches of artists like him and Keb’ Mo’, Spady maintains that their music is a natural progression for the blues, the result of filtering it through a century’s worth of stylistic innovation.

“It’s really a reflection of all the different kinds of music we grew up listening to,” Spady says. “I think it also reflects that our heart is still in the blues. No matter where we go with it, that’s always a part of the music.”

Music Notes

edited by Mark Jordan

The Final Bow

Death has been too much with the Memphis music community in recent weeks, with the deaths of O’Landa Draper, Alan Balter, Randall Lyon, Joel Hurley, and Charlie Feathers coming one right after the other. Hopefully this Monday’s memorial for Balter will be the end of this spate of tragedy. Friends and family will gather at Eudora Auditorium, 4684 Poplar, at 7:30 p.m. to honor Balter, who was music director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 1984 until he left the post three months ago. He died on August 21st of complications following lung surgery.

In lieu of flowers, Balter’s family has asked that monetary memorials be sent in his name to a select list of charities, which can be obtained by calling 718-956-6092.

A Touch Of Classical

It is a fitting nod to the past that Balter’s memorial should come at the beginning of the MSO’s new season. On Friday and Saturday at Eudora Auditorium, the MSO will present the first program in its Masterworks series featuring guest conductor Shinik Hahm and pianist Susan Starr. The program will also be featured at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre on Sunday. Balter’s memorial is on Monday.

Filling out the MSO’s schedule until the end of October will be another of its popular concerts at The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, featuring conductor Vincent L. Danner on September 26th.

On October 10th, “Mr. Piano” Roger Williams will open the pops season with a concert at The Orpheum. An acclaimed showman and performer, Williams will play a program full of piano favorites such as “Autumn Leaves,” “Born Free,” and “Lara’s Theme.”

The Masterworks series continues at Eudora on October 16th and 17th, when renowned maestro Kenneth Kiesler and violinist Eugene Fodor take the stage for a program that includes selections from Verdi and Vaughan Williams.

October 24th marks the beginning of the chamber series at Eudora as resident conductor Vincent Danner takes up the baton to lead the orchestra in a program that spotlights principal harpist Marian Shaffer.

And on October 31st, Danner and the orchestra will join Lawrence Edwards leading the Memphis Symphony Chorus for two performances of a special Halloween program titled “The Witching Hour,” which will include selections from Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Mozart’s Requiem.

Tickets to all concerts can be ordered by phone from the MSO ticket office (324-3627), Ticketmaster (525-1515), or by visiting the MSO’s box office at 3100 Walnut Grove, suite 501.

New Stuff In The Bins

More blues this week.

Part of Delmark’s recent spate of reissues that we first told you about two weeks ago is Blues Hit Big Town, a collection of some of the late Junior Wells’ very first recordings. Though only a teenager on these sides cut in Chicago for black-owned United Records (and still showing the influence of Little Walter, whom he replaced in Muddy Waters’ legendary ’50s band), Memphis native Wells is already a fearsome player and a strong, moody singer. Helping matters out just a little are the sessions’ sidemen, including Elmore James, Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, and Waters himself.

MCA Records complements its reissuing of the B.B. King catalog with B.B. King’s Greatest Hits. Except for a few of his early smashes such as “Three O’Clock Blues” and “Please Love Me” and some recently discovered gems like his awesome take on “Sweet 16” from the When We Were Kings soundtrack, the essential King sides are pretty much all here. There’s the classic live versions of “Everyday I Have The Blues” and “Sweet Little Angel” from Live At The Regal, “The Thrill Is Gone” from Completely Well, his duet with Robert Cray, “Playin’ With My Friends,” from Blues Summit, and, of course, “When Love Came To Town,” his well-known teaming with U2.

Finally, former Stax soulman Johnnie Taylor manages to breathe a little life into the synth-horn, beat-box production of so much modern blues on his latest for Malaco, Taylored To Please. Taylor is one of the last of the real soulmen left, and this new record is a guilty pleasure from a master. The album opens with a cover of King Floyd’s irresistible “Groove Me” and closes with a rap remix of Taylor’s updating of his biggest hit, the first single ever certified platinum. “Disco Lady, 2000 (radio slam remix)” features rapper Prophet of Pain and is, 22 years after the release of the original, a lot of good, kitschy fun.