(This originally appeared in Soundcheck Magazine)

James Montgomery Interview

James Montgomery, the ace blues harpist who’s been working the crowds in Boston, and across the nation, since the beginning of the 1970s, is drenched in sweat. He is standing center stage at the House of Blues in Cambridge, celebrating the release of his new album, “Bring It On Home.” For the past half hour, he and his extremely tight band have been pumping out jump blues songs like “Loving Cup,” “I’m Ready,” and “Sweet 16.” In between songs, Montgomery has had to shout over the enthusiastic applause to express his gratitude to the crowd. He has a commanding stage presence, controlling the energy level of his band with a flip of the finger, an arching of the eye brow, or a joyful shout to whomever he wants to take a solo. The crowd is lapping it up, and Montgomery seems to be reveling. It’s definitely a good way to launch an album. Montgomery has been playing on the Boston scene for over three decades. In that time, he has released six albums, played with names like Jagger, Springsteen, and Allman, and has toured relentlessly. He has also found the time to host a blues radio program, write a blues column, and serve as the President of the New England Blues Society. I spoke with him by phone to talk about his career, his influences, and his music, and he was as friendly a soul as one could hope for. What shined through most of all in the interview was his humor, his passion, and his love of the music. Montgomery may not have done it all, but he’s not finished just yet....

BSM: You’ve been doing this for over 30 years. How did you first become interested in the blues?
JM: Well, I was always interested in music. I mean, I won a talent contest in 6th grade--when all these youngsters that really had talent and could play piano and all this stuff, they could really do something. Well, I just kind of got up and pantomimed Elvis Presley with a plastic guitar and won the contest, which proved to me right then and there that you don’t need talent to be in show business. Anyway, years later, I saw this jug band playing, and it was the first time I really heard that rural blues. I was listening to some blues, but it was when I saw the jug band that I really understood what blues was all about. I was about 15. So those guys inspired me. Incidentally, all those guys still have careers in music, and one of them is the leader of the Uptown Horns, who tour with the Rolling Stones, J. Giles, and other people...
BSM: You gravitated towards harmonica at a time when, in the blues, the “Guitar Heroes” where dominating the genre. How was it that you made your way toward the harmonica?
JM: Well, I said to myself, “What’s the quickest way I can get up onstage and get with a band?” And it occurred to me that it might take years if I wanted to play guitar before I’d be good enough to play in a band, and if I played harmonica, it wouldn’t take as long. Within six months of picking it up, I was fronting a band, actually. That’s sort of half kidding but half serious, but there was something about the harp that really just struck a chord with me. No pun intended.
BSM: So who were your early influences, then?
JM: My early influences were guys like Sonny Terry, but I never really copped that style. My big influences would’ve been James Cotton, Paul Butterfield, and Junior Wells.
BSM: How long were you playing before you arrived in Boston?
JM: I had the jug band for a little while, and then all those guys went off to college, so I started a blues band, initially called the Pocket Blues Series, named after the Lawrence Ferlinghetti Pocket Poet Series. So I played for maybe two and a half years before I went to college, and I had the opportunity to play with John Lee Hooker when I was about 19.
BSM: How did you end up playing with Hooker?
JM: Actually, I had met John before, and I was playing with a band, and he loved the guitar player in the band, and so he was kind of using that band to back him up, and I was part of that band. We really hit it off, and we did some work together, and we ended up becoming friends for life, actually. I spoke to him just a few months ago, probably about a month before he passed away. Whenever he’d come out this way, I’d call him up, and we’d talk about the old times in Detroit and we just had a great....He was a wonderful, wonderful guy.
BSM: How did you decide upon covering Hooker’s “Dimples” on your new record, “Bringing It On Home”?
JM: You know, I did “The Motor City’s Burning” on the demo for the CD as well, and John and I used to joke about that all the time. You know, the year they started burning the city down was the year he and I left. Anyway, I was trying to get Wayne Kramer, an old friend of mine from the MC5, to come down and play guitar in my band, and I found out that he would be available at a future date to play guitar on that song. So, I figured I’d get this revolutionary, wacko guitar player Wayne Kramer to play guitar on that song, and I’m actually saving that for the next CD. But , “Dimples” I always liked, and I was talking to John Lee about that once. Turns out there was a girl in Detroit who he wrote that song about, and I said, during my radio show, “John, maybe we should see if we can hook you up with that girl with the dimples.” So, it’s about a girl. John didn’t get to hear my version. He missed it by about a week and a half.

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