The blues comes in many shades — Delta, roadhouse, Chicago, West Coast, Carolina, jump, boogie, swing. Then there's something I like to call penthouse blues, the kind of blues that's been refined by jazz harmony, buffed with virtuosic guitar technique. Penthouse blues is where six-stringers are apt to discuss whether the Mixolydian or Dorian scale is more appropriate for a particular solo.
This is where Robben Ford fits, although he may disagree with me. The California native played with proto-pop-fusion act The L.A. Express, which backed Joni Mitchell in the mid-'70s. He also performed in one of Miles Davis' electric bands in the '80s and was a member of the crossover jazz act The Yellowjackets.
"My interest in fusion was fairly short-lived," Ford says in a phone interview. "My first solo record … I confess, I made a fusion record. But I came by it honestly. I was hanging out in L.A. with Tom Scott and those people who were progenitors of the sound. I quickly moved back into a more blues- and jazz-oriented R&B sound."
Ford's resume doesn't provide him much in the way of blues cred, although it's not a topic he cares to discuss. On the issue of whether he plays a particularly whitened-up version of the music, he says, "My first exposure to the blues was the Paul Butterfield band, an integrated band. It was neither black nor white to me, although the blues is obviously a black form. That totally lit me up and gave me my direction as a guitar player. In San Francisco, I opened up for Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Freddy King. Muddy sat in with us and told the audience we played the blues right. I was 19 years old. To me, it's always been a non-issue. It was white people who had the issue. Black people didn't."
Ford's latest album, Keep on Running, finds him revisiting a number of soul and rock classics — horns and all — and dropping in a few originals. He sings in a reedy tenor that's short on expressiveness and plays expert guitar solos with a thick, wailing tone that calls to mind the fusion era. It is, for all intents and purposes, a white R&B record.
As is de rigueur for penthouse blues guitarists, Ford has made several instructional books and videos. The promo blurb for The Blues and Beyond promises to "reveal [Ford's] advanced concepts for improvising and comping. He demonstrates how he plays over chord changes including altered and chord substitutions. He also discusses phrasing and playing 'outside' using pentatonic, diminished and melodic minor scales."
That's not the extent of Ford's instruction, though. "I urge players to tap into their personal voice," he says. "Talking about the intangibles is how I start my clinics."
This article appears in May 3-9, 2006.