Robert Cray Is Not Your Average Blues Artist

Believe it or not, it wasn’t one of the blues greats who inspired Grammy award-winning blues artist Robert Cray to first pick up the guitar in the early 60s. Instead, it was a group of four talented musicians from Liverpool, England – the Beatles.

And it’s not just the Beatles who have inspired Cray, who will be performing at the on Saturday, March 5. With his father in the army during the early part of his life, the family spent several years living in Germany. There, he would listen to all kinds of music, from the popular music of the day, to Ray Charles and B.B. King.

These days, Cray can be found listening to anything from hard bop – a style of jazz from the 1950s incorporating influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues—to Bob Marley. So, when asked how to describe his sound, the musician said that it’s “a little bit of everything.”

“I had the good fortune of hearing a lot of different kinds of music,” he said in a phone interview. “I saw Jimi Hendrix a couple of times, and I had the opportunity to play with Muddy Waters.”

Nevertheless, he said, the person who has inspired him the most was Albert Collins, a blues musician who began his career in 1952 and played at Cray’s high school graduation in the early ‘70s. It was Collins, he said, who became one of his favorite musicians during his teenage years.

During that time, he said he had grown tired of learning to play songs on the radio and began hanging out with friends, who were more interested in blues. Several years later, Cray was touring with Collins as part of his back-up band, and they would open the show as the Robert Cray Band.

“Toward the latter days of high school, I was hanging out with guys who were listening to bands with really strange names—Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf,” he said with a chuckle.

Though he wasn’t into blues at a young age, preferring to listen to the popular songs of the day, he said that as he grew older and more accomplished as a guitar player, blues began to appeal to him.

From those beginnings, Cray went on to become one of the most successful blues musicians of 1980s and 90s, touring with the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughn and later, Eric Clapton, with whom he collaborated on Clapton’s Crossroads Music Festivals in 2004, 2007, and 2010. To date, he has released 20 live and in-studio records and won five Grammy awards.

One of his favorite things about being a blues musician, he said, is the same thing that first inspired him as a kid in the 60s – being able to play in front of people.

“I think it’s fun still, just like it was when I was a young kid,” he said, adding that he and his band never go on stage with a set list, preferring to just wing it and see what songs they feel like playing.

“Even though there’s the business aspect involved, still the thing that’s most exciting it being on the bandstand. I like being put on the spot. That makes it more of a challenge,” he said.

So what spectators can expect from March 5’s performance at the PAC?  The answer: Anything and everything.

“It all depends on what pops into our heads,” he said. “We just play it by ear.”

Robert Cray will be performing at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 5. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit the WHBPAC's website at http://www.whbpac.org or call the box office at (631) 288-1500. Tickets are priced at $55, $70, and $85.