Blues Treasure Rory Block Comes to Winter Wind
Five time Blues Award winner Rory Block is a traditionalist and an innovator at the same time. Her fiery and haunting guitar and vocal style redefines the boundaries of acoustic blues and folk. Block will grace the Winter Wind stage in the Norman Depot, 200 S. Jones, on Sunday, October 23 at 7:00 pm. Tickets are $20.
Heralded as “a living landmark” (Berkeley Express), “a national treasure” (Guitar Extra), and “one of the greatest living acoustic blues artists” (Blues Revue), Rory Block has committed her life and her career to preserving the Delta blues tradition and bringing it to life for 21st century audiences around the world.
Block’s father owned a Greenwich Village sandal shop where musicians like Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur and John Sebastian all made occasional appearances. The rich and diverse Village scene was a constant influence on her as she grew up. She was playing guitar by age ten, and by her early teens she was sitting in on the Sunday jam sessions in Washington Square Park.
During these years, her life was touched – and profoundly changed – by personal encounters with some of the earliest and most influential Delta blues masters of the 20th century. She made frequent visits to the Bronx, where she learned her first lessons in blues and gospel music from the Reverend Gary Davis. She swapped stories and guitar licks with seminal bluesman Son House, Robert Johnson’s mentor. She visited Skip James in the hospital after his cancer surgery. She traveled to Washington, DC, to visit with Mississippi John Hurt and absorb firsthand his technique and his creativity.
“This period seemed to last forever,” Block Recalls nearly forty years later.” I now realize how lucky I was to be there, in the right place at the right time. I thought everyone knew these incredible men, these blues geniuses who wrote the book. I later realized how fleeting it was, and how even more precious.”
The world started taking notice of Block in the early 1990s, and she scored numerous awards throughout the decade. Best Blues and Originals went gold in parts of Europe. She brought home Blues Music Awards four years in a row – two for “Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year,” and two for “Best Acoustic Blues Album of the Year.” Then in 1997, she won the Blues Music Award for The Lady and Mr. Johnson, a tribute to Robert Johnson, taking home “Acoustic Album of the Year.”
Today, after more than twenty highly acclaimed releases, Block is at the absolute height of her creative powers, bringing a world full of life lessons to bear on what she calls “a total celebration of my beloved instrument and best friend, the guitar.” Her newest project, titled "The Mentor Series," is a growing collection of tribute albums to the blues masters she knew in person.
Links:
Rory Block Web Site
Video: Rory Block - Crosssroad Blues
Video: Rory Block - Silver Wings
To purchase concert tickets visit TicketStorm.com, or phone 405-307-9320. PAS office and gallery hours are 8:00 am to 2:00 pm Monday through Friday in the Norman Depot.
Winter Wind Concerts are produced by The Performing Arts Studio and made possible in part by grants from the Norman Arts Council, the Oklahoma Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Local sponsors include: Tom McAuliffe, Don Cies Read Estate; Cindy Merrick, Therapy in Motion; and Nancy McClellan. Contributors are Glen Brown; Jack’s Pool Service; Skye Diers, Gingerbread Nursery School; Hugh and Keri Young; Dale Wares, Wares Properties;;and Danna Primm. Friends include Tom & Mary Cay Woodfin; Tom Cotrone; and The Grider Family. Additional support comes from Cafe Plaid, The Montford Inn, and Bohemia Moveable Feast Caterers.
Tulsa band What’s That returns to the historic Santa Fe Depot, 200 South Jones Avenue as part of the Performing Arts Studio Sunday Jazz at the Depot series. What’s That will perform at 7:30 p.m. on October 30, 2011. An admission fee of $7 will be charged ($5 for seniors/students; free for 18 and under). Refreshments will be provided.
