ROBBEN FORD & THE BLUE LINE
HANDFUL OF BLUES

On Robben Ford & The Blue Line's third CD, Handful Of Blues, the leader/guitarist/singer gets back to what he's always been about, even when he wasn't playing it: the blues. "It's like my brother Mark said," Ford laughs. "'Well, you've regressed all the way now.' I have a tendency towards simple music, but it has to be a real, authentic, artistic statement, and it's never done without complete sincerity. There's something that happens when you get the music down to such basics. Rather than needing to make the music simpler so I could feel freer, I just sort of rediscovered that kind of openness that exists in the blues. That is the beauty of the blues, from a technical point of view. It inherently has an openness, due to the simplicity that I personally love." The album also marks the return of one of the most ground-breaking labels of the '70s, Blue Thumb, co-founded by veteran producer and label head Tommy LiPuma, recently named president of the GRP Recording Company.

Robben Ford is without doubt the only musician who can lay claim to performing or recording credits with Miles Davis, Kiss, Burt Bacharach, and Muddy Waters - not to mention George Harrison, Michael McDonald, Joni Mitchell and countless others. Raised in the remote town of Ukiah, California, Robben moved to San Francisco at 18 and was immediately scooped up (along with older brother Patrick on drums) by blues harp legend Charlie Musselwhite. Leaving to form the Charles Ford Band (named after their father) with Patrick and younger brother Mark on harmonica, the short-lived group recorded only one album but left a legion of fans - many of them guitarists who owe a huge debt to Robben 25 years later.

Stints with blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon and the fusionesque L.A. Express (touring and recording with Joni Mitchell) preceded Robben's long-awaited solo debut, 1 979's Inside Story. The album also marked the formation of the quartet that would become the Yellowjackets, with whom Robben performed until 1981. A year later Ford enlisted bassist Roscoe Beck and in 1985 drummer Tom Brechtlein began sitting in, joining officially after the release of Robben's next solo outing, 1 988's Talk To Your Daughter.

In between Ford played with one of his jazz heroes, Miles Davis, thanks to an intro from Tommy LiPuma. "I first met Tommy when he signed and produced the Yellowjackets," recalls Robben. "I worked with him in some other situations, like Randy Crawford, and then he was the guy who told Miles about me. It's a real auspicious coincidence that Tommy came to GRP at this point and had already been thinking about the Blue Thumb idea. We wanted to be presented in some way so that people didn't see the GRP logo and automatically think we were a jazz act."

Having self-produced their first two Stretch/GRP albums, the trio chose Danny "Kootch" Kortchmar to produce Handful Of Blues. "I wasn't sure I wanted a guitar player producing," admits Robben. "But the more we talked about it, he was obviously right to help us do what we wanted to do on this album very live, very spontaneous. He basically insisted that that's the way the record turn out. He just wouldn't let us polish it. We cut all the tracks for the album in four days. Not because we had to, or that there was a time or a budget constraint, it was just happening." Brechtlein adds, "Having a producer meant a lot. Once we took the hat off and gave it to Danny, we immediately just became a band playing in a room. It allowed us to create." Although he's best known for his work with James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Don Henley, Kortchmar's blues credentials were up to the task at hand. "That's really his genre, where he's coming from as a guitarist," Robben adds. "He's very much like me in that he learned all that stuff just by playing it - like learning to swim by being thrown in the water. "

Of the level of maturity and authenticity displayed by the trio, Beck comments, "I don't think you get any sense that anybody's trying to prove anything anymore. If it fits the song not to play something, then nobody plays it; if it fits the song to play out a little bit, then somebody plays out. And the potential has always been there to play 'the plain shit on the deal,' to quote Jimmie Vaughan. Robben and I especially had that background and were into blues in our early teens. Jazz was kind of a natural progression from the blues and at some point the blues was a natural progression back." A native of Long Island, Brechtlein drummed with Chick Corea for five years and three albums before stints with the late Joe Farrell, Wayne Shorter and Al Di Meola. Beck grew up in Austin, Texas and studied music at North Texas State University. When his band Passenger recorded with songwriter Leonard Cohen, Roscoe produced several tracks, a talent he would later display on Jennifer Warnes' acclaimed Famous Blue Raincoat and other projects.

Ironically, Robben's reputation as a guitar great forced him for many years to neglect his natural vocal ability, which Handful Of Blues shows is stronger than ever. "My vocal chops atrophied to some extent. There was a long period where I was not singing at all and when I would sing I'd just go out and do it. For the last year I've been working with a vocal teacher, so my range has increased tremendously, as well as my control. I committed myself to bringing my singing up to the level of my guitar playing and everybody else in the band." Eleven of the CDs 12 songs are in fact vocals, including seven originals by Ford and one by Beck, along with a lowdown nod to Muddy Waters (Willie Dixon's "I Just Want To Make Love To You"), a funkified reworking of the traditional "Chevrolet" and a jazzy reading of the old Animals hit "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" (inspired by Nina Simone's original version). "I thought, 'We should at least do one instrumental,"' Robben laughs. "So, "The Miller's Son" was written about two days before we went into the studio. I got the idea from listening to Sonny Boy Williamson, Rice Miller, who was one source I'd never tapped. I tried to find a harmonica line he would play that might inspire something, but I have to admit the Clapton influence there. And I'd wanted to do kind of a Clapton dedication."

Harmonica chores on that and three other tunes are handled, naturally, by Mark Ford, who augments the Blue Line along with Kortchmar's occasional rhythm guitar (and solo on "I Just Want To Make Love To You"), keyboardists Ricky Peterson and Russell Ferrante (the former having worked with Robben on David Sanborn sessions, the latter's association with Ford going back to 1972), and pianist Henry Butler.

With Handful Of Blues, Robben Ford & The Blue Line go back to what they are about simply and sincerely, the blues. "That's my whole philosophy of music," Robben smiles.