E-Mail This Article to a Friend Birthday blues Local harp master Jerry Portnoy turns 60 with a bang BY TED DROZDOWSKI

"I rode around in a car with Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup," says Jerry Portnoy. "I won money from Freddie King playing poker. I’ve played with Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Young, Lee Jackson, and Eric Clapton. It’s amazing to me, actually. When I start thinking about all the things I’ve done, it feels almost like I’m talking about somebody else’s life."

But Portnoy, who’s about to make local blues history with an all-star birthday celebration he’s throwing for himself at Scullers Jazz Club this Tuesday, is reflecting on his own past as we converse over spicy Chinese food at a restaurant not far from his Waltham home. And there’s no denying that his life and the very fabric of blues history are intertwined.

He practically grew up in his father’s rug shop on Chicago’s fabled Maxwell Street, a marketplace where all types of Windy City residents crossed paths and great bluesmen like Robert Nighthawk, Magic Sam, and a musician who would have a profound effect on Portnoy’s future, the harmonica virtuoso Little Walter, entertained shoppers. "Blues was the incidental soundtrack to my childhood. I heard it and didn’t take particular note of it at the time, but I’m convinced that its imprinting on my subconscious was crucial. In the late ’60s, when I was a grown adult, all of a sudden blues started appearing on the radar screens of white people with the advent of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Rolling Stones. When I heard it again, it spoke to me immediately. I’m sure it was not only the power of the music but the power of the memory that had been imprinted. It just felt like — this is right for me."

So right that Portnoy’s never really let up playing the blues since his first encounter with the harmonica. "I had tried a number of instruments and was convinced I had no musical ability. But the first time I blew into a harmonica, I knew I could play it and that playing harp was what I wanted to do with my life." So he started carrying a bottle of whiskey to Big Walter Horton’s place, sharing it in return for lessons. By 1974 he was such a hot player on the Chicago blues scene that Muddy Waters, the father of electric blues and perhaps the genre’s most dynamic performer, had drafted him into his band.

"I felt so blessed," Portnoy recalls. "The first gig we played was at a big baseball stadium in Indianapolis on this big festival. I walked out there and the announcer said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Muddy Waters Blues Band.’ It was just the greatest thrill. So heavy, so great." A few months later, he was touring Europe with Muddy. In 1980, Portnoy, pianist Pinetop Perkins, and a few other Waters bandmates left to form the Legendary Blues Band, with whom Portnoy still participates in reunion shows when he’s not doing his own gigs or playing with a new outfit called the Boston Blues Explosion that includes local heavyweights Jay Geils, pianist David Maxwell, and singer Darrell Nulisch.

After six years with the Legendary Blues Band, Portnoy was getting tired of the alcohol-fueled lifestyle he lived on the road. He settled down in Waltham with his first wife and became a regular on local bandstands while laboring by day as an advertising copywriter. But the blues were an itch that he couldn’t even halfway ignore, so after roughly a year off the road he formed a band with guitarist Ronnie Earl and went barnstorming again.

Since then, the harmonica master has assembled his own groups, released a pair of solo albums including last year’s excellent Down in the Mood Room on his own Tiny Town label, and — oh yeah — done a lot of touring and recording with a British guitarist named Eric Clapton, a bloke who first became smitten with Portnoy’s musicianship during Jerry’s years with Muddy. Portnoy toured and recorded with Clapton from ’91 to ’96, and he appears on Clapton’s live 24 Nights set and EC’s back-to-blues epic From the Cradle (both on Warner Bros.). The sessions and years-long tour for From the Cradle marked a period when Clapton played with more passion, inspiration, and imagination than he had since the early 1970s. And Portnoy’s fluid, rich harp lines made him a star in his own right within Clapton’s performing band, as capable of holding arena-sized audiences in thrall as the guitar legend himself.

Clapton recently summoned Jerry back to England for two rounds of recording. "During the first sessions, we worked on two albums simultaneously — a commercial pop record and a series of recordings of Robert Johnson tunes. The second time it was all Robert Johnson, and now Eric’s got 14 Johnson songs in the can."

The birthday that Portnoy and a cast of friends from all over the country — among them fellow harmonica virtuosos Kim Wilson, Rick Estrin, and Mike Turk, Jay Geils, David Maxwell, reed players Doug James and Gordon Beadle, and the rhythm team of Marty Ballou and Marty Richards — will celebrate on stage at Scullers is his 60th. That number seems to be rattling him a bit. "Turning 30, 40, 50 . . . none of that bothered me. But there’s something about 60. You just can’t get around that number. You’re old!"

He’s also aware that the blues scene that so inspired him as a kid is no more. "The world that I came up with is pretty much gone. The people I learned from — that generation born in the Delta between 1900 and 1920 who were the ones that really brought this music out — are gone with just a couple exceptions. People who are coming up after me now, though they can still hear the music, don’t have the opportunity to hang out with the great innovators of the blues and absorb the whole vibe and attitude and world view that underlies the music. Blues is a music that’s passed down in a personal, hands-on way. To me, that’s pretty central to understanding it. It’s always been part of the blues for people to seek out their heroes and try to learn from them or emulate them and carry it on for themselves. I mean, Lightnin’ Hopkins, for God’s sake, was Blind Lemon Jefferson’s lead boy. I was extremely lucky I got to play with all my heroes."

Portnoy, of course, has his own disciples. Not just his ring of local students, but players all over the world who have absorbed almost all he has to teach via Jerry Portnoy’s Blues Harmonica Master Class (available at www.harpmaster.com), a box set with three hours of recorded instruction, more than 300 examples of playing, coaching, and explanation, and a detailed illustrated booklet. "That’s still gonna be selling 50 years down the road, because the way to play the harmonica isn’t going to change and there’s no better resource for learning the instrument out there. I get a few orders every day, which keeps the cash flowing between gigs.

Revealing the secrets of his craft isn’t something he was originally comfortable with. "Early in my career, I used to feel kind of strange about showing people how to play. You know the stories you hear about the blues being the Devil’s music and Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil for mastery. I felt there was an element of truth to that — that the music was dangerous. The lure of playing this music can be so strong and seductive, I felt I might ruin a kid’s life by encouraging him, and he’d get hooked on it — drawn into the world of blues at the expense of everything else. But after a while, I realized it didn’t matter. It’s like John Lee Hooker said, ‘If it’s in ya, it’s got to come out.’ And if it’s not, it ain’t."

Portnoy’s upcoming party is, of course, a celebration of his colorful life in the blues, but it was inspired in part by the death of one of his friends, DJ Mai Cramer, whose Blues After Hours show was a staple of WGBH 89.7 FM and the Boston blues scene for 20 years. "Mai’s funeral really planted the seed. All these people got up and spoke and said wonderful things about her, and I thought it would have been nice if there could have been some reciprocity. I’m sure Mai had some equally wonderful things to say to the people paying her tribute. So I decided that while I’m still on top of the ground, I want to hold a party to say thank you not only to all my fans but to the people who’ve directly given of themselves to help me over the years. I mean, the doctors who’ve helped with health care, accountants, the people who do my Web site. So after the show, there’s going to be a private party for them, too."

Both the public and the private affairs will be recorded and filmed. Beyond that, Portnoy isn’t sure what his next move will entail. "Right now, I’m so busy with the details for the party that I really haven’t had much time to think about what’s next other than more of the same. I don’t have any plans to record right now, but I want to get out and play more. While I don’t expect people to genuflect, I have been at this for 35 years and have played with some of the greatest musicians in the world. I have as heavy a résumé as anybody out there, so I’d like to be traveling and performing more than I do. When you travel under reasonably comfortable circumstances, you’re treated with respect, and you get to play music as often as you’d like, there’s nothing in the world that’s more fun to do."

MATT MURPHY’S at 14 Harvard Street in Brookline has become a place to hear one of the more eclectic mixes of music in town, from free jazz to folk, country, blues, and roots rock. Last month the pub/eatery, which has no cover charge, struck up an alliance with Emerson’s WERS 88.9 FM that brings musicians playing Murphy’s to the airwaves every Monday. "The artist that’s playing Murphy’s that night appears earlier in the day on whatever WERS show is appropriate to their genre of music," says Jason Waddleton, Murphy’s music promoter.

Upcoming performers include Harvard Square busker Pablo Picker, who will play WERS’s morning Coffeehouse before appearing at Murphy’s this Monday night, November 25. The Slip’s singer, Brad Barr, and the female trio Maeve will do the same on December 1 and 8, respectively. And Timo Shanko, a member of Fully Celebrated Orchestra who appears with the Slip and Joe Morris, among others, will play on WERS’s afternoon Jazz Oasis and at Murphy’s on December 15.

Jerry Portnoy plays his 60th birthday party this Tuesday, November 25, at Scullers, in the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel, 400 Soldiers Field Road at the Mass Pike; call (617) 562-4111. For more information about Monday nights at Matt Murphy’s, call (617) 232-0188.