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Roomful of Blues swings into a new era
Since it was founded in Rhode Island in 1967, Roomful of Blues has had eight lead singers and over 60 members, but the core concept on its over 20 records has always been the same: The jump blues sound that ruled early rhythm and blues with horns, a swinging rhythm section, and a soulful male lead singer.
The group’s new record, “Steppin’ Out!” (out Oct. 10), has most of those ingredients, plus a new one: singer D.D. Bastos, making her the first female lead singer ever to record with the group.
When prior lead vocalist Phil Pemberton had to leave the octet due to health issues, band leader and guitarist Chris Vachon thought of asking Bastos to do the dates on the band’s busy schedule. The two were already playing together in a local five-piece band called The Sons of Providence.
“Because I’d worked with D.D. before, I knew she could do it. So I thought let's try something completely different,” Vachon said.
Initially, he could see that some audience members were surprised. “But you could see them really liking it,” he said. “So it was the right thing to do.”
The move will introduce Roomful fans around the world to Bastos, a powerful vocal force who in recent years has had a low local profile. She was a fan of New England’s most famous blues band even before she was old enough to see them play clubs. In the early ‘90s, she put together a five-piece group called D.D. & The Road Kings, which she said was one of the few female-fronted groups in the region that played Chicago blues. On one especially memorable night, the band opened for Roomful at a ballroom in Warren, Rhode Island. “That was a real feather in my cap,” she said.
Although recent Roomful records have often found the group expanding into Memphis soul of the 1960s, “Steppin’ Out!” goes back to the core Roomful blueprint of hard-driving, passionately delivered R&B, with songs originally recorded by the likes of Z. Z. Hill, Jimmy McCracklin and Smiley Lewis. Prior to the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, R&B was a female-dominated genre, so with Bastos at the helm Roomful can now expand its repertoire by revitalizing rarely played material by Big Mama Thornton, Etta James, Ella Johnson and Big Maybelle.
Once Bastos started playing live shows with the group last year, Vachon said “people started asking ‘Do you have anything with her on a record?’ So I got out our binders of songs and went through a ton of them. For the next record, we’ll have more time to do some more originals.”
The album is on Alligator Records, the storied Chicago blues label that has been Roomful’s home for the past two decades. But even a devoted blues fan like Alligator founder and owner Bruce Iglauer said that many of the songs unearthed for the project were brand new to him.
“I think I was only familiar with two or three of the songs,” said Iglauer. “Songs like ‘You Were Wrong’ or ‘Steppin’ Up in Class’ are so obscure. What I liked is nobody was trying to exactly imitate the original record. They were inspired by it, but they weren’t trying to just make a copy.”
Iglauer wasn’t previously familiar with Bastos, who in recent years has devoted much of her time to educational work that includes her role as chorus director at Global Learning Public Charter School in New Bedford. “She throws herself into the songs,” he said. “She doesn’t hold back the emotion. I like when a singer is so emotionally committed to the song and is willing to put everything they’ve got into every performance. She’s got the no-holds-barred approach, which is part of the R&B tradition.”
When the group was selecting material for the record, saxophonist Rich Lataille, who joined in 1970 and has played on every Roomful album, reminded his bandmates of a little-known chapter in the group’s history. Around 1979 or 1980 — accounts of the exact year vary — Texas singer Lou Ann Barton briefly joined Roomful after leaving Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band Double Trouble.
Barton was only in the group for a few months, and there’s just one bootleg audio clip of her singing live with Roomful online. Barton would go on to a major label deal and a long association with Vaughan’s brother Jimmie. But Latallie remembered that the Barton-era Roomful had worked up a unique rearrangement of Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” which is given a new attitude by Bastos.
Despite being busy with her teaching work, Bastos didn’t have to hesitate when she was offered the Roomful slot. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she said. “I’m so happy to be part of such a major blues institution.”
Bastos says thanks to the school’s focus on arts enrichment, she’s been able to balance her teaching with road work. “This is my priority,” she said of performing. “It always has been, always will be. They understand it and they're happy to have me, because you can’t teach what you don’t know.”
Roomful of Blues plays the Narrows Center in Fall River on Nov. 28 and shows later this year in Westerly, Rhode Island, Concord, New Hampshire and Northampton.
