John Hammond put on a fierce, expertly played solo show Saturday night at the Colony Theater on Miami Beach. No surprise there. However, the veteran blues troubadour also charmed with autobiographical tales that led into many of his selections, regaling a rapt audience with stories from his youth, early career and dealings with some of the genre's legendary figures. Always affable and charismatic — especially when he gets lost in song and his rather elastic features contort into a roadmap of anguish — Hammond often comes across as shy and diffident on-stage. Not this time.
Fresh off the Blues Cruise, and a more-intimate Friday night boat trip with a few friends of Tigertail, the arts org behind the Colony show, Hammond seemed relaxed and was more talkative on-stage than I'd ever seen him. Hammond told of how he headed for California as a neophyte blues guitarist and found work pumping gas at a station on Wiltshire. One day, a guy pulled up in a convertible and caught young Hammond eyeing the expensive Martin guitar inside. The motorist asked Hammond to play him something — which he eagerly agreed to, just for the chance to lay his hands on the coveted instrument. Well, the driver turned out to be Hoyt Axton, who booked Hammond immediately, which led to more gigs and his eventually earning enough scratch to buy a car and get the hell out of L.A.
Another tale involved the idiosyncratic, nine-string guitarist Big Joe Williams, who Hammond met in Chicago through his friend Michael Bloomfield. One night, Bloomfield, who had already established himself as an young guitar ace on the Chicago blues scene, brought Hammond to Silvio's, a rough South Side club, to hear Howlin' Wolf. Outside the club, a bottle whooshed by Hammond's head, smashing against the wall behind him, apparently thrown by a member of the menacing street gang across the street. The barrel-shaped Williams, who had learned to take care of himself after decades of hoboing, pulled his piece, which Hammond described as looking — and sounding — like a cannon, and fired a blast at the hoods, who sensibility made themselves scarce. Hammond said he didn't know who to be more frightened of: the gang or Big Joe.
The stories lent insight into Hammond's musical performance. Switching between acoustic guitar and a vintage National steel, and accompanying himself on rack harmonica, he dipped into the rich and often poetic country blues songbook, offering stunning renditions of Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen" and Blind Willie McTell's "Love Changing Blues," both of which were played on the silvery steel. Blustery reads of "I'm Just Your Fool" and "Mean Ol' Lonesome Train," the latter of which he introduced as a Sleepy John Estes tune, conjured up the requisite mix of swagger and self-effacement that makes lyrics like "Gonna buy me a shotgun, aimed dead at you" seem less like abuse than humorous hyperbole. Over the past six years or so, Hammond has been writing original material, as well. His own swaggering "Slick Crown Vic," written about that first car he drove out of L.A., and "Come to Find Out," with the evocative lyric "The wind is howling, the leaves turned inside out/My world has unraveled, boy, I come to find out," held up just fine alongside the classics.
Expect a new recording by Hammond in March, on the Chesky label. As yet untitled, it will be a solo acoustic disc, recorded at a Chelsea church in New York City. As anyone who's seen him live can attest, Hammond needs no assistance, as he generates groove for days and blows notes on his rack harp that could cut steel.
With so many great stories at his command, Hammond could easily fill a book or two with rich, insightful tales of his 45-plus years in the business. Even if he doesn't write them down, I hope they become a regular part of his repertoire.
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