Blues
Moon Radio – Review
Live
Concert – Drink Small at the Lourie Center, October 27, 2014
When
attendees have to wend their way through the parking lot on a sun-filled autumn
morning past news trucks from three major networks: WOLO, WLTX and WIS, you
know something newsworthy is going on.
The
Blues Doctor, Drink Small was ready to regale the crowd of about 70 people,
mostly seniors, who enjoyed a concert sponsored by the Jazz Foundation of NYC
and the Lourie Center in Columbia, S.C.
This
South Carolina treasure, who is both a living legend and a named ambassador for
the Blues, having received the Bobby Blue Bland Jus’Blues award in 2013, was
introduced to the crowd by Clair DeLune, of Blues Moon Radio. Gail Wilson-Giarratano,
who wrote the soon-to-be-released biography of Drink Small for History Press (who
along with Charleston SC’s own Arcadia Press are the largest publishers in the
world of local and regional history books), kicked off the hour-long
presentation with a reading from the book, recounting how Small was critically
injured by a mule-drawn cart while picking cotton on the family’s sharecropping
farm in Bishopville, and how that turned his life around to become a musician.
“These
are my Blues,” she quoted Drink Small, and he chimed in song, creating an
impromptu Blues ditty for Wilson-Giarratano’s
mother, which also commended the Lourie Center, the Jazz Foundation. It drifted
into his witty observations of life in general as the crowd clapped and danced
in their chairs.
His next
song two songs were dedicated to his wife Drina Bratton Small, who is a nurse.
“I waited until late in life to take a wife, ‘cause I didn’t want to get married twice!” Small growled through the microphone, encouraging the crowd to sing along with the lyrics, “ God have blessed me to have a nurse, ‘cause she knows when a man hurts.”
“I waited until late in life to take a wife, ‘cause I didn’t want to get married twice!” Small growled through the microphone, encouraging the crowd to sing along with the lyrics, “ God have blessed me to have a nurse, ‘cause she knows when a man hurts.”
“Women
need affection, connection and protection to go in another direction,” was the
lead-in “Drinkism,” which is a witty combination of rhyme schemes and messages –
either earthly or sacred, depending on Drink Small’s mood at the moment, “whether
I’m a teacher or a preacher.” He loves
church people and club people the same, Wilson-Giarratano quoted from
his biography. That intro was followed by a rollicking version of “A Good Woman
is Hard to Find.”
“Bishopville
is My Hometown” followed with Wilson-Giarratano encouraging
the celebration of his music by taking crowd members by the hand to get them up
and dancing. She told another story from
the book about the trip to Memphis they took together where he was named an
Ambassador of the Blues, which sowed the seed of the idea for telling his
stories through the book.
Small
invited everyone to call him and book “Drink Small and the Every Now and Then
Band,” saying “They are hot, they hit the spot and I guarantee they’ll make you
trot!”
Small
drew the concert to a close by saying, “I don’t want no confusion in my
conclusion,” introducing the farewell offering, “Us Gots to Go,” a rollicking
barnburner, “us can’t boogie no more, ‘cause us gots to go,” capping it off
with his inimitable basso profundo punctuation, “I gotta go now...”
We hope
he stays with us for a very long time.
You can
contact Drink Small by liking his official Facebook page at “Drink Small, the
Blues Doctor,” and you can hear him each week as Blues Moon Radio’s Artist of
the Year (and perhaps millennium) each Tuesday evening between 6-8 p.m.
Information
about his biography can be found at: DrinkSmallBook.com
For his mailing list, please see italics notes below.
For his mailing list, please see italics notes below.
Special
thanks to Peter Verner of NYC’s Jazz Foundation (www.jazzfoundation.com), to
Mary and Stephanie at the Lourie Center and to Gail Wilson-Giarratano and
family for their dedication, friendship and support of this living Blues
legend. Thanks to WIS, WLTX and WOLO for their interest and coverage.
Clair DeLune is a professor of Roots Music history; an author, and
producer and host of Blues Moon Radio since 1990 on WUSC-FM 90.5 and HD-1
Columbia and streaming on the internet at www.wusc.sc.edu. Her Blues blog is
updated weekly at www.bluesmoonradio.blogspot.com. She warmly invites Blues fans
to like Blues Moon Radio on Facebook, and to get on the mailing list for
updates regarding Drink Small and other Blues topics of interest by sending a
request to be on the list to BluesMoonRadio@gmail.com with the subject title
SUBSCRIBE and your name in the body.
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