Blues Band’s Dave Kelly still rocking music scene his way

It’s an old crack but this time it’s appropriate. “So you’re the one who bought it.” Well, sort of. It came my way and I’ve kept it.

Dave Kelly is referring to the incredibly obscure John Dummer Ooblee-dooblee Jubilee Band album.

Never heard of it? Neither have most people, and looking for information about the album doesn’t turn up much. Suffice to say, it didn’t sell.

It was my introduction to Dave Kelly, guitarist (Dummer drums on this and the three albums before that bear his name), and I’ve been curious about Kelly ever since.

He’ll be accompanying Maggie Bell Thursday, playing blues and the Scottish Bell’s better known songs with Stone The Crows, from her solo work, and throwing in the unexpected such as a Patsy Cline chestnut.

Kelly has worked with Bell since 2008. She was in Holland and came out of retirement to be included on a tour that Kelly was putting together. That seems to be what Kelly does.

Although he has a solo career in which he leads his own band and has several albums bearing his name, he’s more a team player, a versatile sideman.

“I was introduced to music by my parents’ record collection,” he remembers. There were a lot of pop standards, but then he heard rock ’n’ roll and was gone. Now, he is listening to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, seemingly having come full circle.

His versatility has served him well. He worked sporadically with sister Joanne, who, in the ’60s, was regarded as the U.K.’s best female blues singer, established himself as an acoustic blues musician, joined Dummer, quit and formed a country-rock band, Rock Salt.

“We made one album,” Kelly says. “We were years ahead of our time in England.”

But his timing was good when he joined the Blues Band. If Kelly is known in North America, it is through his involvement in the Blues Band.

Very briefly, the Blues Band was Paul Jones’s break from acting and a return to the blues he was singing in Manfred Mann. Jones called on ex-Manfred alumnus Tom McGuiness, who’d also played in McGuinness Flint; he brought in Hughie Flint and invited Kelly, who had a day job at the time. Kelly, in turn, roped in Gary Fletcher, a relative unknown but also moonlighting with a band. Originally intending to play a one-off gig, The Blues Band was born, and was such a roaring success a best-selling bootleg album was recorded. This led to a signing with Arista. Nearly 40 years later (with a few breaks in between), The Blues Band is still gig-by-gig — its workload determined to a degree by Jones’s acting career, and, more recently, an offshoot of Manfred Mann called The Manfreds. This suits Kelly. “Have I been true to my music?” he asks. “Yeah! I’ve never compromised myself.”

tharrison@theprovince.com