Heart full of soul

Sure, blues fans know Earl's name from his years spent with Roomful of Blues and his now decade-plus leadership of Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters. They've got to; he's perhaps the finest living blues guitarist on the planet, equally conversant with the styles of Robert Jr. Lockwood, T-Bone Walker, and Steve Ray Vaughan. What separates Earl from most of the other guitarslingers around is his melodic sensibility and his layman's ears. Which isn't to say that he doesn't hear music from the inside, but that above all else he knows, loves, and respects the value of a good tune. For many players, virtuosity can be a vice -- a joyride into chopsville where technique becomes an end in itself and tunes are no longer tunes; they de-evolve into mini-clinics, each number displaying another nuance of technique. For Earl, the nuances are merely extensions of the expressive quality that's the beacon of all of his music. That intangible-yet-fully-recognizable quality called "soul."

Grateful Heart sounds like the album Earl's been heading for since he went all-instrumental after the departure of singer/harpman Sugar Ray Norcia from the Broadcasters. That was a leap of faith -- in himself and his audience -- unheard of in blues. Instrumentals have always been a side dish, maybe even mere relish, in this music. Never an entree. But Still River (AudioQuest), his first all-instrumental CD, was a banquet flavored by roots rock, sharp-rhythmed and legato-lined Texas blues, downhome Chicago churn, and the élan of Earl's own sense of swing and melody.

Subsequent live shows and recordings have found Earl incorporating more of the sliding chords and gentle textures coined by his jazz-guitar heroes Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell while sacrificing none of his true-blues instinct -- which is made whole by a signature reverb-dappled sound that always seems sent straight from the heart to his sweet-toned Fender amplifiers. By the time last year's Blues Guitar Virtuoso Live in Europe (also Bullseye), '95's most sophisticated and joyful blues CD (and a great example of truth-in-advertising), hit the street, Earl had scaled the evolutionary ladder so far that John Coltrane's "Alabama" had become a gutsy entry on his live set list. Asking a blues audience to sit or stand through a piece of music that travels into abstract expressionism is an act of courage no other blues artist has attempted. But there hasn't been a blues artist able to make the worlds of jazz and blues meet as gracefully as Earl since swing king T-Bone Walker's '40s and '50s creative peak.

"Alabama" appears, swaddled in the Broadcasters' gorgeous ensemble playing, on Grateful Heart. As does the elegiac "Skyman," a delicate remembrance for Duane Allman, and "Welcome Home," an uptempo swinger Earl wrote in celebration of Vietnam veterans (like Broadcasters bassist Rod Carey) that resonates with hope -- as well as some near-"out" soloing by organist Bruce Katz. And if Earl's dream team of Broadcasters (who also include the remarkably flexible perfectionist of a drummer Per Hanson) weren't enough to make this one of the hottest soulful-jazz recordings to come down the pike since the glory of '60s R&B, the group's joined by David "Fathead" Newman on tenor sax for a half-dozen cuts.

Newman plays like what he is: one of the greatest R&B saxists around, with a command of jazz and blues attuned to Earl's. And the arrangements these five lions offer are detailed and transparent, like the anatomical models they had in biology class, so every detail of each instrument, every tonal shade, every melody and harmony, can be savored without strain. Hey, this is a great record -- not only for jazz and blues heads, but for anybody who likes a gorgeous tune.

Earl remains, as usual, modest regarding his latest offering. "I don't consider myself a jazz guitarist, I really don't," he says. "To me, it's just `Ronnie music.' I'm not really a big jazz-guitar fan except for Wes and Kenny. I didn't study Charlie Christian and swing like a lot of people do. I was invited by Santana to play with him recently in Brazil for two nights. His main man is Coltrane, and my main man is Coltrane too. I just think about playing Coltrane on the guitar sometimes."

I'll stick my neck out further. On Blues Guitar Virtuoso Live in Europe, Earl turned out a bright-as-diamonds love letter called "Thank You Mr. T-Bone." I expect that somewhere in the next generation of guitar up-and-comers, there's a budding virtuoso who'll someday be writing a number called "Thank You Mr. Earl."