Specter shares blues as others did for him
Like many before him, Dave Specter is a global ambassador of Chicago blues. He regularly hops continents a few times a year to play to audiences he wants to grow, not just for himself, but also for coming generations of blues musicians.
“I tell people, ‘Tell your kids about this music.’ Not only do younger musicians need to get into it, but younger people need to hear it, and when they do, it moves them,” he says. “It changed my life when I was 18.”
Specter’s newest album, “Message in Blue” (Delmark), shows that while he can certainly play the role of a guitar stylist, capable of delivering a wide range of hammering blues riffs, his lasting impact includes warmer guitar tones and nuanced jazz phrasing, both of which are infused with a deep blues feeling. The maturity of these new songs, many instrumentals, reflect the maturity of a musician who instills the smoky playing established by such jazz guitar greats as Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery.
“Feeling is key,” he says. “But there are many different kinds of feeling you can play the blues with. Many blues people don’t even realize what a huge world of music there is within the blues.”
Specter is unique because he too is an instrumentalist, but on “Message in Blue,” he also wrote lyrics for some songs, and included one or two covers that are sung by several guest vocalists, including Otis Clay, the great Chicago soul music legend.
A CD release show for the album is Wednesday at SPACE in Evanston.
Clay sings “This Time I’m Gone For Good,” the haunting burner of a song by Bobby “Blue” Bland, the soul great who was also his friend. Clay says he considers the Specter version a tribute to the late singer who died last year at age 83. The song was played at his funeral.
“When you’re at a Bobby Bland funeral, I don’t care if you’re at the Vatican, you can play his records,” he says, with a laugh. “I went to this big church and it was a full service with everybody making speeches. And they’re rolling the casket out and I hear this song on the speakers. I went home and said, ‘Hey Dave, let’s do that song.’ ”
Specter grew up in the North Park neighborhood to a family of musicians — his brother played harmonica, his sister the guitar, and his mother classical piano. “The Midnight Special” on WFMT-FM (98.7) brought country blues, gospel and folk music into the home, and Specter soon became transfixed.
His father, a community activist, regularly took Specter to see the blues stars of his day, including Bland and B.B. King. Soon, Specter was old enough to hit the clubs on his own, showing up at places like the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side and Biddy Mulligan’s on the far North Side.
Doing his part to promote the city’s blues heritage, Specter includes on the new album a burly, hard-driving song called “Chicago Style,” with horns and Brother John Katthke on vocals, who name-checks a gallery of Chicago blues greats. Specter says he wanted “to write a new Chicago blues theme.”
“We need it here,” he says. “One of the things I’m most proud of, as a native Chicagoan, is our musical history. It should never be overlooked.”