Pat Travers "Blues On Fire"

 

My introduction to radio at Jolly Rolly Colly's WPRK happened with my first college class, Speech 101 with the legendary Dr. Charles Rodgers, in the basement of what was then called the Mills Memorial Library.  The class was set up in the studio and the control room was behind the soundproof glass.  The station only operated ten to twelve hours a day that Fall of '76, so it wasn't on in the morning at all.  Since Doc was my advisor, I would meet with him in the afternoons around baseball commitments, so the station was on...and I was hooked.  Student-only operated, 75% classical programming, home basketball game broadcasts...that was it...hard to believe, huh?  Yet, I still wanted to be a part of it.  Took this naive, small-town boy a few weeks to work up the nerve to ask the station managing upperclasswoman from New York City about subbing on the student-programmed Rock portion of the broadcast day.  When the phone rang in my wing of the deserted freshman dorm at 8:35 PM, it was aforementioned station manager, Ellen Lyons (where are you?), asking me to do the 9 PM show.  I snatched up as many albums as I could carry and hustled to the basement, arriving at 8:50.  Ellen was in an obvious hurry as I received the five-minute Cliff Notes version of how to run a radio station.  It was 8:58 when she said, "That's it," and hit the door, looking back over her shoulder to say, "Have a nice holiday."  That's right, "holiday."  It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 90% of the student body had vacated the campus, and I wasn't doing just the 9 PM show that night, I was doing the entire weekend!  That was five hours a night through Sunday.  Needless to say, I made a billion errors; bad cues, wrong pots, open mikes (which wasn't that bad since I had no one to ask for help, the phone didn't ring, and I wasn't yet talking-out-loud-to-myself crazy), etc., so based on self-preservation I started playing the longest cuts I could find.  I was awful on-air, and not just that weekend, either.  I still have a cassette from part of a show from the end of my freshman year, and if you've ever listened to college radio, you've heard this voice; the slow, inarticulate, stammering monotone..."uh...that was...Rush......Working Man.........wow....I really like that one..."  Anyway, back to the longest tracks comment...initially, this allowed me several minutes to concentrate on what I was doing, consequently, making fewer mistakes.  As the weekend wore on, I got better at the technique of cuing and eliminating dead air, but I was still playing the longer songs.  This gave me time to sample literally hundreds of albums on the back channel, and this was when I discovered Pat Travers (whew...that's the longest f*#king intro yet!).  His first album was released that year and I was hooked on music :)  The debut had covers of Mabelline, Hot Rod Lincoln, Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights), and a JJ Cale song.  Of course, Boom Boom and Snortin' Whiskey hit it big from the live album that followed a couple of years later.  Speaking of live, I've probably seen PT in concert more than any other act in my lifetime. 

These were the only two I could find.  The first one was 1979.  Also saw him play on his birthday, but whether that was '78 or '80, that's too many bong hits ago.  I've got all of his albums from the first stage of his career.  He kept touring but quit releasing records for a few years.  Once he returned to the studio some twenty years ago, he switched to more blues based recordings and been cranking 'em out ever since.  I heard most of them and own a couple, but I'd rather see him play them live, which finally (YEA!), brings me to "Blues On Fire."  This is an entire album of obscure blues songs written before the World Wars.  Well, one is not so obscure since Led Zeppelin covered it on "Presence" (Nobody's Fault But Mine).  Pat's version does not improve on it.  There is another song called "Bulldozer Blues," which you will recognize, sort of, as "Going Up The Country" by Canned Heat.  Those guys were blues historians and knew that you can take some liberties with songs in the public domain or deemed "traditional."  I don't know if PT's version is true to the original either, but the tune sticks in your head. 

Basically, this album is a rocked-up version of eighty-five-year-old blues songs.  Well, all but one track by Son House, which is my favorite, and probably the most true to the original...



There is a plugged-in version on YouTube that's fairly righteous, too.  One comment says, "this is Pat's BEST album to date..he gets better with age man."  I can't possibly say that, but I will keep four tracks.