Just playing the blues
Guitarist Tinsley Ellis is releasing a new album
ATLANTA — In 1972, sitting in the front row at a B.B. King concert at the Marco Polo Hotel in Miami, 15-year-old Tinsley Ellis was smitten by the cool magic of the blues.
When King broke a string, he handed it to Ellis, put one on while still singing a verse, and then nonchalantly hit the next lick.
“That was the first concert I ever saw,” Ellis says, allowing that he still has the string. “After the show, B.B. came out and met all the kids in the lobby. He was like Santa Claus. He signed pictures and hugged us and it was a big warm-fuzzy.”
Just shy of 56, Ellis has been playing the guitar for nearly 50 years and, following in the footsteps of King, playing the blues and traveling the world from Chicago to Moscow over the course of a performing and recording career that’s spanned four decades.
Reflecting on the rarity of his longevity in the notoriously tough music business, Ellis mixes modesty and humor, explaining it all adds up to hard work and paying dues.
“I’ve gone about as far in the blues world as you can go,” he says. “I’m grandfathered in, almost literally. What’s the percentage of talent to elbow grease? I don’t know the exact percentage, but I guarantee that elbow grease is the bigger portion.
“And I do know, if you go into it looking for fame and fortune, you will certainly fail. But if you go into it saying, I want to have a career, then you’ve got a chance.”
Currently, Ellis, who lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children, is touring behind a self-produced album, “Get It!”
A guitar hero who calls his music blues-rock in deference to his AfricanAmerican idols, Ellis is known for his fiery fret work, soulful vocals and exuberant stage presence.
But he wasn’t imbued with that spirit by a midnight meeting at the crossroads, or even inspired by scratchy old 78-rpm records.
“I blame it all on the Beatles,” Ellis says. “The Beatles on ‘Ed Sullivan’ in 1964. It blew my mind, the twang and all, and I begged my parents for a guitar. That’s a very common story. But it led me to the other groups, like the Zombies, the Animals and the Yardbirds.”
Ellis remembers his first guitar, a cheap rental, as “a piece of crap.” But after he took a few lessons, his parents figured he was going to stick with it, and they bought him a better guitar.
At Atlanta blues mecca Northside Tavern on a recent Saturday night, Ellis had one of his favorite guitars, a vintage ’59 Fender Stratocaster, swathed in a gig bag, and slung over his shoulder.
It’s the guitar he started out playing in the ’80s band, the Heartfixers, with his friend and mentor, Chicago Bob Nelson. The night was a tribute to Nelson, a beloved Atlanta singer and harmonica player who died in January.
Nelson was a legend, though he wasn’t really famous. And neither is Ellis. But just as typing Justin or Kim into a Google search immediately begets Bieber or Kardashian, typing Tinsley begets Ellis. Beginning with his Alligator debut, “Georgia Blue,” in 1988, he pretty much toured nonstop, refining and elevating his electric blues-rock guitar style and learning to be the singer and front man over a string of albums for Alligator and other labels.
Influenced by the Vietnam War and the topical music of the time, Ellis wrote his first song, “I Don’t Want To Go To War and I Want To Be Free,” when he was 10 years old.
He started getting serious about writing blues songs in 1986, with the final Heartfixers album, “Cool On It.” “A Quitter Never Wins,” by far the best-selling song Ellis has ever written, appeared on the 1994 album, “Storm Warning,” and was recorded by Jonny Lang on his 1997 album, “Lie To Me.”
That was a major peak in a career with its fair share of valleys, Ellis says. After 9/11, things went way down in the valley for a while, with the convention business tanking, and clubs and bars closing.
While he was still getting bookings, the big crowds just weren’t showing up, especially on weeknights. With his earnings down by as much as 30 percent, Ellis briefly entertained the notion of quitting the road.
“One day in 2003, I went and got a newspaper and I looked at the want ads, and I couldn’t find a single thing to do,” Ellis says. “The only thing I thought I might be able to do is something in heating and air conditioning, because I heard it paid well.”
Instead, Ellis decided to strip down his business model, become his own manager, and sign with a new booking agent.
And then things got a little better. He launched his own label, Heartfixer, to release “Get It!,” the kind of allinstrumental blues set he’d always wanted to record.
And recently, he did a major theater tour as part of a Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf tribute concert, billed as “Muddy & The Wolf,” with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, featuring Kim Wilson, James Cotton, Jody Williams and Bob Margolin.