BLUE’S BLUES: One of the juicier squabbles in the usually reserved world of children’s programming erupted last month when Steve Burns, the human star of the mostly animated Blue’s Clues (on Nick Jr.), left the smash-hit show after a five-year run that spawned a billion-dollar-a-year merchandising empire. Time described Burns — a soft-spoken geeky-cute twentysomething in a green-striped rugby shirt who plays straight man to his animated pooch, Blue, and her anthropomorphic pals — as "bitter" in the wake of his departure. Burns, an affable guy who has his own on-line cult of single moms who’d like to date him and who covet his high-school-yearbook photo, is an erstwhile musician who lists Flaming Lips and Radiohead as among his favorites, and he has delivered sweetly self-depreciating comments since leaving. Admitting that his prospects for post-Blue acting work are slim, he has remarked wistfully that he expects kids to like his replacement better and to forget him soon. But parents (including our Events Editor, whose two-year-old has an enormous crush on the guy) have worried how their kids will react to the replacement, who’ll be introduced as Steve’s brother "Joe." We’ll soon find out — though Burns’s replacement won’t appear on TV until at least the end of 2002, the nationally touring live-action show Blue’s Birthday Party will be helmed by an interim Steve by the name of Roger Kraus. The horror. Blue’s Birthday Party comes to the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street, February 6 through 10. Tickets are $15 to $35; call (800) 447-7400.
THAT OTHER LEE LEWIS: No, it’s not Jerry. It’s the "Larry Lee Lewis Vaudeville Revue," though it sounds less like vaudeville than like the heartland absurdity of a mid-’50s TV variety show inexplicably brought to life in 21st-century Davis Square. The Larry Lee Lewis in question is some sort of comedy host who describes himself as a "cross between Henny Youngman and Milton Berle"; his guests include acrobats, jugglers, comedians, magicians, and an impersonator of the post-mortem king of rock and roll who calls himself, appropriately enough, Dead Elvis. The revue runs January 30 through February 2 at the Nexus Theater Center, 255 Elm Street in Somerville. Tickets are $10 to $25; call (617) 623-1209.
NEXT WEEKEND:
Ike Turner
"I’m fixing to win this Grammy," Ike Turner gleefully vows over the phone from his Palm Springs home. He explains that after more than 50 years in the music business, after selling millions of the records he cut during his partnership with his ex-wife Tina, after writing and recording what’s widely regarded as the first rock-and-roll record, 1951’s "Rocket 88," he’s been nominated for a Grammy Award for the first time. His comeback CD, last year’s Here and Now (Ikon/Bottled Majic), has been nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album, and Turner, who plays the House of Blues next Thursday, says he’s planning to lobby and pray as hard as he can that the little gramophone-shaped statue ends up on his mantel.
He has a shot if the academy members vote with their ears and ignore the baggage that dogged his personal life until he exited jail free of his addictions in 1993. Here and Now is the sound of Turner finally coming into his own as a performer by re-embracing the first music he knew — the blood-and-sweat rockin’ blues he learned in the roadhouses between Memphis and his native Clarksdale, Mississippi. He’s also stopped hiding behind other singers, this time belting out "Rocket 88" (originally released on Chess under the name of Jackie Brenston, a member of Turner’s Kings of Rhythm band) and the disc’s other tunes himself. Plus he’s polished up his barrelhouse-piano chops and gotten back to making the bent strings of Stratocasters howl on numbers like "Ike’s Theme."
Even if he doesn’t win, the past year’s been a championship one for Turner. At 70, he was the most-buzzed-about artist at 2001’s South by Southwest music-biz conference in Austin, where he and the same band he’s bringing to Cambridge raged through a hell-bent set. "I was so nervous my pants leg was wet," he says, "but I guess we did it all right." Then he played in front of 125,000 at the Chicago Blues Festival, where he was reunited with his old piano teacher, the bluesman Pinetop Perkins. "Me and some other guys all chipped in and bought Pinetop a baby grand piano for his 88th birthday this year. I’m so happy to be together with him again."
Turner’s reunion with Perkins has also sparked a plan for an album teaming him with other old friends, like the bluesmen B.B. King and Little Milton, and artists he inspired, like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Dr. John. "I never thought I would ever be accepted the way I’m being accepted today. In the past, I always thought somebody else needed to be in the front, although the music and the ideas were mine. I was insecure. Now I believe I’ve made the best record I’ve made in my life, because it’s about the real Ike Turner. I’m not hiding behind anybody, and I’m playing what’s in my heart."
Meanwhile, he’s got another disc in the can — a solo-piano album he says he cut live in four hours. "I went in the studio with no idea what I was gonna play, and I just did it. I do that on stage, too, because that’s when the realest ideas come."
Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm play the House of Blues, 96 Winthrop Street in Harvard Square, next Thursday, January 24, at 10 p.m. Call (617) 491-BLUE.
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
