Scenes from a blues fest, part III

Yet more highlights from this year's Chicago Blues Fest, which took place June 5-8 in Grant Park:

• Tremendously entertaining vocalist Liz Mandville vamped it up in front of her excellent backing band, The BluesCrowns. Attired in a short, silver-sequined getup and shaking what her mama gave her, Mandville sang clever and sexy original material with great gusto. And The BluesCrowns, whom I mistakenly called The Blue Points in an earlier post (remember the cats from the Netherlands who backed Little Willie Littlefield and who I flew with from Cincy?), were spot-on, providing terrific accompaniment on saxophone, guitar, keyboards and upright bass.

• I always enjoy catching up with Otis Taylor, one of the most intriguing voices in blues today. His latest recording, Recapturing the Banjo, provided the theme for his show, as he was joined by Don Vappie and Guy Davis, on tenor banjo and harmonica respectively, to forcefully restate the instrument's African origins. Daughter Cassie Taylor provided the solid bass support, and an extraordinary young female violinist added a lively stringband dimension. Picking the five-string banjo and guitar, Taylor displayed a unique yet rooted approach, and sang in a dusty, powerful holler. The crew concluded the highly engaging show with a call-and-response throwdown on the "Hambone," as Davis came out front and performed a version of the age-old body-slapping dance.

• Years ago, I used to see diminutive singer Chick Rogers knocking out the late-night crowds at Kingston Mines, and often wondered what became of her. Apparently, she put the blues life behind her for a spell to perform gospel music. Well, she's back and, excuse the cliché, better than ever. Her voice filled the park from the Crossroads stage as she kicked the blues in the ass, her big vocals bursting with the bravado and positivity of someone who's seen the worst and lived to tell the tale.

• Theodis Ealey is an entertaining enough blues and R&B cat, but from his South Florida shows, I always felt like he was just playing the jive BS many white folks expect at a blues club. However, Ealey, who hails from Natchez, Miss., performed a superb and highly personal unplugged show with his significantly older brothers YZ and Melwin. Their teasing banter and reminiscences made the show even more special.

• Guitarist Lightnin' Malcolm came on like the second coming of Junior Kimbrough, as he hopped around the stage and played the huge, majestic chords associated with the Mississippi Hill Country master and his associate R.L. Burnside. Fittingly, he was backed by Burnside's son, Cedric Burnside, on the drums, who can truly be considered a master of the idiom. Tunes like Kimbrough's "All Night Long" and R.L.'s "Jumper on the Line" kept audiences bouncing and boogeying under the broiling afternoon sun.

• Neither advanced years nor soaring temperatures could keep T-Model Ford in check. In fact, the octogengarian Hill Country bluesman just didn't want to stop. With his cherubic 10-year-old grandson expertly beating the drums behind him, T-Model locked onto a groove like a pitbull on a mailman, his songs going on and on in mesmerizing fashion. At one point, a woman came onstage to tell him to wrap it up; T-Model nodded, took a nip from a bottle of Jack and proceeded to launch into a 20-minute boogie.

• Lil' Ed Williams remains one of the most-entertaining blues performers in the business, which he proved again with his bandshell show. The vertically challenged bluesman ruled the enormous stage with his athletic antics and, even more so, with his brute-force slide guitar and huge baritone vocals. His Blues Imperials, as always, laid down an amped and exciting traditonal-meets-contemporary blues sound, with standouts including the hilarious "Icicles in My Meatloaf" and the Ed Head jump-blues favorite, "Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits."

• Barbara Lynn's was probably my favorite of all of the bandshell shows. The lefty guitarist and still girlishly soulful vocalist from the Gulfcoast played to her strengths as she performed one excellent, old-school R&B gem after another, with topnotch backing from guitarist Lil' Buck Sinegal and his horn-fueled Buckaroos. The highlight, of course, was an emotion-laden rendition of her 1962 chart-topper "You'll Lose a Good Thing."

OK, we're coming to the end of what I can remember of this year's Chicago Blues Fest. Next time: I get soaked to the bone but still manage to catch great performances by Paul Geremia, the Victory Travelers, Magic Slim and B.B. King.