‘Blues Boss’ takes charge of the boogie-woogie
If you push-pinned Kenny ‘Blues Boss’ Wayne’s career on a roadmap, it would be dotted with names like Champion Jack Dupree, Amos Milburn, Michael Kaeshammer, Jim Carrey and, believe it or not, the PT Cruiser.
Born in Spokane, Wash., he was introduced to music in church where his father was a minster.
“Picked up stuff by ear. Had to refine it and embellish it. You had to use creative juice to make it sound right. If it didn’t sound right, they would tell you,” the award-winning keyboard player said recently.
As a young man, he wasn’t thinking of music as a career.
“My mother always encouraged me. Mom’s comment was ‘whatever makes you happy, honey.’ My dad was thinking more of an income — musicians don’t make any money so get a real job so you can raise a family.”
He played jazz and Latin. He played Motown in dance bands. But blues didn’t appeal to him. He didn’t like the dingy clubs and drunken people who were part of that world.
In fact, it wasn’t until his 40s, after he’d moved to British Columbia, that blues started homing in on him. He was doing a Nat King Cole tribute show in Spain when a guy from Scotland came up and said he reminded him of American boogie-woogie piano player Champion Jack Dupree who lived in the U.K. He even mailed Wayne some cassettes.
“I listened to it but I didn’t know where that was going to fit into the genres of music of the places I was playing.”
Then, in the mid-1990s, a friend told Wayne he should do a blues album. He made up for lost time, recording six albums in 10 years and three in the last six.
He won a Juno award in 2006 for Let it Loose.
“I thought maybe there is something here. At that point, I saw the light, put it that way.”
At some point, someone put Amos Milburn on his radar. Milburn, a boogie-woogie piano player, was famous for the song One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer. One of his albums was called The Return of the Blues Boss. Something clicked.
“I think maybe I’ll pick up the torch. Maybe I can borrow his spirit, he can motivate me. That’s where I sort of got my little handle, yeah.”
He was now Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne.
The Jim Carrey connection comes courtesy of the movie The Mask. Carrey wore brightly coloured zoot suits in the film. Wayne loved the look.
The popularity of the PT Cruiser a few years later affirmed that 1940s style in Wayne’s mind. His suits and hats are practically trademarks by now.
“It cost me money to be looking like that. But people now expect it. It puts me in the mood of entertainment. You’re there, you’re dressed up and you have this look and then you sit at the piano and play the blues and boogie-woogie.”
Contrary to what one might assume, it wasn’t allegiance to one of the early practitioners of boogiewoogie piano that got Wayne into it, it was Canadian boogie-woogie piano player Michael Kaeshammer, 23 years his junior. He thought only old people would be into it until he saw Kaeshammer perform a sold-out show.
“I really didn’t have to change much at all. I kept my same look and just threw some boogie-woogie in there along with the blues. My focus became clearer and clearer and clearer.”
This summer, Wayne was inducted into the Boogie-Woogie Piano Hall of Fame at the Cincinnati Blues festival, joining the likes of Ray Charles and Professor Longhair.
Wayne, 72, now performs all over the world. He was in Spain and Israel in the summer. He was in Switzerland in the fall and he’s heading to Peru.
“I was told as a blues musician you start getting your reward towards the end,” Wayne says. “You’re either young and you’re a wizard or you’re an old man in a young body. Or you’re just an old man, you’ve got a lot of stories and life to share.
“Things are sort of picking up now. And I’m trying to fill my bucket list before the end. And so I’m taking whatever new places I can travel to because I sure couldn’t afford just to go there. And it’s great to go there and perform because they’re waiting for you. So yeah, I’m keeping up.”
Wayne’s upcoming Pianorama show with old friend David Vest might bulge the walls of The Bassment. Each musician has his own Yamaha grand piano to get loud on.
“It’ll be fun,” says Wayne. “It’s great because he’s got all these stories, and listening to him talk about his stories kind of drives my memory.
“We both feed off each other, musically and with the history of things we’ve done in the past.”