Alvin Youngblood Hart plays Killing Floor blues radio show

Justin Showah
dm Staff writer

From the looks of his critically acclaimed debut album sleeve, Big Mama's Door, one might assume that bluesman and Chicago native Alvin Youngblood Hart hails from the Mississippi Delta. The cover features Hart strumming his guitar on the front porch of a ramshackle shed, and even though he's from an urban area, Hart has a strong link to Mississippi. And he plays like it too.

The winner of the 1997 W.C. Handy Best New Artist Award and several Living Blues Critics Awards, Hart has stormed onto the acoustic blues scene in recent years with his virtuosic twelve string guitar style. Tonight the now Memphis local will make his Oxford debut on the Killing Floor Radio Show at Bodega at 9:30, hosted by blues businessman cum photographer Dick Waterman and Tom Freeland.

Hart says his attachment to Mississippi music is an important one. "I don't like to be labeled with what within the blues world is labeled as 'delta blues.' [My family's] not in the Delta. If you look on a map it's pretty close to where Highways 55 and 82 collide, it's close to a town called Winona," he says. "So, the whole thing about Delta blues is something that turns me off. I think that people nowadays refer to as being 'authentic' Delta blues, they don't know what the hell they're talking about."

After a stint in Los Angeles following high school, Alvin spent six years in Natchez, Mississippi, working for the Coast Guard. Next he moved to New York for electronics school, followed by a move to Oakland, where he landed a gig opening for Taj Mahal at Yoshi's. His Okeh release, Big Mama's Door, followed and so did the kudos.

With his second release, Territory, Hart diverged from the cutthroat country blues that won praises with his first album. With it, he shows that his talents on the guitar touch categories other than country blues--like avant-garde, rock, swing, jazz, and polka. Hart may play Charlie Pride or Leadbelly, Frank Zappa or Charlie Patton, but whatever he does, the playing is flawless and captivating.

This is the best up and coming blues artist out there. Alvin Youngblood Hart doesn't just cover blues songs. He interprets and expands the blues as an art form, and his own music puts an original spin on one of the South's first home musics--the country blues.

The show will be broadcast live on Rebel Radio 92.1 FM beginning at 9:30 p.m.

Editor's note: Living Blues editor Scott Barretta contributed to this article.