Nothing but the Blues at OSPAC

Blues music is about raw emotion. The origins of the blues are rooted in pre-Civil War plantation hollers — slaves calling to each other across the field. After that, the history gets complicated but the music doesn't. Sad or funny; losing in love or laughing about love — the blues cover the spectrum of human experiences over the course of repeating 12 measure choruses.

A great blues festival is coming into the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center, 4 Boland Drive, West Orange, Saturday, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Expect to hear searing guitar solos, soulful vocals and tight rhythm sections.

Here's the lineup: Legendary Black Top recording artist Bobby Radcliff, Brad Vickers and his Vestapolitans and West Orange based Al Gold and The Mighty Suburban Rhythm Kings.  

Gold, who produced the event, said "There will also be great eats from Bloomfield's F&B Caterers, one of our sponsors, and great arts and crafts. Each of the acts will perform its own set, but there will be some cross pollination among the groups, too."

Vickers will be exchanging his guitar to play bass during Bobby Radcliff's set and the three groups will jam together to close the evening out.

Gold, a well-known commercial graphic artist, also designed the festival poster. He talked about both the guest musicians coming in and his own group.

"Bobby Radcliff is a unique personality. In 1969, when everyone his age, about 18, was heading for Woodstock, he hitched out to the first year of the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in Michigan. Soon he hitched to Chicago where he heard legends like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf," he said. "Soon found what he needed to hear in the person of the late Magic Sam."

What Radcliff heard in Magic Sam's voice was country Delta Blues mixed in with soul, urban blues and R&B.

What Radcliff also found was this: For the price of a drink or two at the bar, these artists would tell you what you needed to know.

Since that early start in the late 1960s, Radcliff's reputation as a fierce performer has grown with each performance and CD release. "He has a killer voice and a unique rhythm style," Gold said.

Radcliff is a guest artist on Brad Vickers and his Vestapolitans current CD, "Stuck with the Blues" on the Indie record label ManHatTone. Vickers has worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddely, Pinetop Perkins and Robert Cray, among many others.

Vickers' style cuts across blues and music genres. His band isn't an all boy's club either, his long time partner Margey Peters is on bass, fiddle, sax, clarinet and some of the vocals.

"Vickers' music reflects this kind of vintage feel with a kind of boogie woogie back beat, but it's original, too," Gold said.

"We don't play covers that you have heard 1,000s of times. We play B.B. King inspired tunes that have meaning for me."

Gold plays around the area in the blues-oriented clubs and restaurants that are the events other sponsors: Hat City in Orange's Valley Arts District, Montclair's Ruthie's Bar-B-Que, Linden's The Robins Nest and Maplewood's Arturo's.

Among his band mates are Maplewood's storming blues piano player Trisha Woods and drummer Jerry Cordasco and Morristown bassist Terry Hammer.

Expect surprise guests to be sitting in, too.