Mighty Blue Kings: From Uptown to Downtown

Illinois Entertainer

December 1998

Mighty Blue Kings: From Uptown to Downtown

By: Adam St. James

Confusion will surely overtake the random visitor to one new music industry website (www.mightybluekings.com). Its graphic designers have come up with a speakeasy door manned by a bouncer who grills callers with a curt “What band are you here to see?” A pull-down menu offers the habitué an amusing multiple choice reply: Massive Blue Things, Mighty Green Guys, Missing Red Boys, Mighty Be Blue Kids, Morbid Blue Queens, and the most persuasive comeback, Mighty Blue Kings. But a miscalculated phrase elicits the rejoinder. “You got the wrong place kid,” followed by an abrupt lockout. It’s as good as guaranteed this won’t be the only time an uneducated dullard mis-labels one of Chicago’ latest musical successes.

No, that trend is already in full swing, so to speak. Were it not for The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s remake of Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive, An’ Wall,” the Mighty Blue Kings could have escaped the misfortunes of artistic stereotyping. Were it not for the Oregon’s Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and their hit single “Zoot Suit Riot,” the Mighty Blue Kings would not be contemptuously drubbed, in their fancy grown garb, as eager to cash in on the chic-est of fashion fads. And were it not for Royal Crown Revue’s scene in Jim Carey’s 1994 movie The Mask, or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s lengthy role in 1996’s Swingers (as well as on an early 1998 episode of “Melrose Place”), the Mighty Blue Kings would not find themselves lumped into the inevitability-to-come-and-go swing revival.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly where many – including some decision makers at the band’s new record label the Work Group (a Sony subsidiary) – are trying to place them, and its irks MBK founder and frontman Ross Bon like a chilled martini down the front of his three-button Armani.

“It’s really hard trying to fight this,” Bon says, a hint of exasperation zipping down the phone lines from the dressing room of Denver’s Bluebird Theater, where he and his four-year old band are readying for one of the final shows of their fall tour. “You’re trying to fight this stampede coming at you, and you can’t do it. But the best way to deal with our plight, as for not being pigeon-holed, is that we stick to our guns. We have to stick to what it is we want to do.”

What Bon wants to do is sidestep the association with the suddenly ubiquitous swing movement seen Lindy-hopping across the country. But his band dresses much like the kingpins of that scene, they cite many of the same influences, employ the same instrumentation, practice similar arrangements, and they popped up at roughly the same time as that genre was beginning to pull a sizeable hipster following. Still, Bon demands the world accept that the Mighty Blue Kings are not a swing band.

“Call it what it is: it’s rhythm and blues. It’s blues with jazz elements. Blues and jazz, that makes rhythm and blues. That started with Louis Jordan, but our show is not just Louis Jordan. B.B. King was a huge influence, Jimmy Witherspoon was a huge influence, Big Joe Williams was a huge influence.” Some might be dubious, but Bon’s case is strengthened by the Mighty Blue Kings’ just released Live From Chicago. The 13-track disc was recorded in Chicago August 15 at Metro and clearly falls closer to B.B. King’s classic 1965 effort Live at the Regal than it does to the nitro-jive that fuels Royal Crown Revue’s The Contender or The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s The Dirty Boogie.

“On that first tune, ‘Buzz Me,’ those are B.B. King’s arrangements,” the 26-year-old singer points out with pride. “Those horn parts, that’s the feel. That’s rhythm and blues – not to be mistaken with R&B. They call Boyz 2 Men and shit like that R&B. But rhythm and blues doesn’t exist any more.”

Except at a Mighty Blue Kings concert, And those events should become unmistakably more crowded in the near future. Live from Chicago, the Kings third self-released album on their own R-Jay label, will benefit from the nationwide distribution reach of Sony’s Red Ink ancillary. Besides earning the band scores of new fans, Bon expects the disc to bridge the gap between the Kings Come One, Come All album, which was released in November 1997, and the group’s pending major label debut. That offering may be a while in the making though. If a new disc hits the stores before the conclusion of this century, Bon will be satisfied.

“I’m in no rush to put our a record,” he explains. “I don’t have to put it out in order to jump onto something, or to appeal to this group or that group. I want to put out a good record that, no matter when it comes out, it’s going to be good. I don’t want people just to buy it because that’s what’s hot. Because as soon as something gets hot, it cools off just as quick. I want it to come out and live and breathe on its own.”

That may require some lobbying on Bon’s part. Since hooking up with Sony and the Work Group, he has frequently haunted the label’s Los Angeles offices, attempting to enlighten the staff as to the differences between his band and those Louis Jordan / Louis Prima / Cab Calloway copycats to which he feels MBK is mistakenly compared.

“ I spent a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, and I was at the office almost everyday working on this live album, getting people to see me there, to know who I am, who the band is, and what we’re about. And it’s not a militant or belligerent thing. I just want to take the time to make everybody aware of what it’s all about. The label’s a very powerful tool, and I want them to understand what we’re about so when they go to bat for us, they’re saying ‘Look, this is the Mighty Blue Kings. There’s nobody else like the Mighty Blue Kings. This is what they do. Enjoy it, take it home with you.’ That’s how I try to work against being pigeonholed – by being stubborn.”

He’s stubborn on behalf of his whole band, of course. When bon becomes bullheaded about the direction his career is being driven, his obstinacy also voices the concerns of guitarist Gareth Best, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Jerry DeVivo, pianist Greg Smith, organist Chris Foreman, and saxophonists Geof Bradfield and John Sandfort. Protecting the group’s interests during their run to the big leagues has taught Bon much about the music industry, and not al of it positive. But when few would be so naïve as to expect wine and roses with every ride in the starmaker’s limo.

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