Who is J.J. Malone?
J.J. Malone is a true blues original. He's quite clear about which musicians most inspired him - Muddy Waters being his all-time favorite - but he doesn't sound like any of 'em - not as a singer, nor as guitarist or piano player. He cites Waters, John Lee Hooker, Doctor Clayton, and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup as early influences on his singing, with Louis Jordan and B.B. King coming into the picture slightly later. Big Bill Broonzy was his first guitar favorite, and although jazz phrasing can be felt in Malone's mature work, particularly the frequent practice of scatting along with his picking (something he's been doing since the '50s, way before George Benson popularized the process), he says that Louis Jordan sideman Carl Hogan was the only jazz guitar player he ever paid close attention to. Malone gives four men associated with Chicago - Roosevelt Sykes, Memphis Slim, Sunnyland Slim, and Otis Spann - as seminal keyboard influences, though he later became rather fond of Wynton Kelly's modern jazz style.

The Decatur, Alabama-born, Fairfax, California-based bluesman doesn't copy anyone - not even himself. Unlike many blues artists who rely on set patterns, Malone is constantly pushing the envelope, playing whatever pops into his head at the moment, even if that means making the occasional mistake. "I think sometimes ahead of my playing," he explains. "I don't like to sit up and practice anything to where I got it down pat. I'd rather do it spontaneously from what I feel and take a crack at it. I love to improvise. I just get a kick out of the surprises that happen."

This approach even extends to his songwriting. The lyrics to some of the songs on The Band Played On, including "Blues Is Comin' Down," "Down That Lonesome Road," "Come Boogie with Me," and "You Call My Number," had been kicking around in his head for some time but didn't take firm shape until he and the band got to the studio and recording commenced. "I never write a song down, so each time I sing it, it's different words," he says. "I have to learn my songs after I record 'em in order to sing 'em on stage."

Even his vocal duet with Frankie Lee wasn't planned. Malone had hoped to have his Blues Express^® label-mate join him for a rendition of "Steamboat," a 1956 hit by the Drifters, but Lee didn't know it. They settled instead on a tune they both knew: Sam Cooke's "Bring It on Home to Me." It's one of only three numbers on the disc not penned by Malone, the others being the Joe Turner classic "Crawdad Hole" and Jimmy Reed's haunting "Honest I Do." "They haven't been done too much," Malone says of those two songs. "We tried to stay away from tunes that just keep coming out over and over again."

The Band Played On is Malone's ninth album as a featured performer (counting the two he cut with Troyce Key) and his first solo album to spotlight his working band. Jill Baxter, whose high, lonesome harmonica sound comes a refreshing alternative to that of the countless Little Walter disciples who populate today's blues world, has been Malone's partner in music and life for the past five years. Guitarist David Vega made his mark in the '70s with the hit-making Graham Central Station but, like most Oakland funk musicians, has a firm grounding in the blues. He and his brother, drummer Steve Vega, have been playing with Malone for four years. Bassist Jason Kantaraakis has been on board for two. Scott McKenzie takes over the traps for Steve Vega on three selections. And making guest appearances on guitar and keyboards on a few tracks is 36-year-old Michael Malone, the oldest of J.J.'s three sons. "I got a chance to introduce the people who are in the regular group that I play with," Malone says of the session. "Everybody was just into it, like, 'Hey, let's do this!' Everybody was just very enthusiastic. I got a chance to express a lot of ideas. Everybody played pretty much what they wanted to to enhance what I was doing. It was really loose and a lot of fun."

Malone himself plays piano on most numbers and overdubs guitar or Hammond B-3 organ on some. And, for the first time ever on one of his recordings, he pulls out his harmonica and blows a bit on "Come Boogie with Me."

"That's what I started on first," he says of the hand-held instrument. "When I was like six or seven, me and a guy named Robert Lee White started getting these harmonicas for Christmas. I'd get a Marine Band every Christmas. During the War, when they stopped making the metal ones, we'd get those plastic ones by Magnus or whoever made those. Robert Lee got to be more adept at the harmonica than I was - me and him was playing in competition - so I said, 'I got to do something else.' So I went to the guitar at 13."

Only in recent years did Malone begin playing harmonica in public, often in duet with Baxter, sometimes all by himself. "I stick it in my pocket to surprise 'em, and all of a sudden I whip it out," he says.

Piano was Malone's third instrument. He took it up around 1956, while in the service at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. "They had these pianos in the service club," he recalls. "They had a grand and an upright. Instead of me spending all my time eating lunch and rushing back to the airplanes, I would spend that time fooling with those pianos. Then, after about a year, I decided to rent one."

Malone's house in Spokane became a gathering place for musicians, and there he and several Air Force buddies - pianist Aaron Carroll, guitarist Charlie Banks, and drummer Calvin Peele - formed a band called the Rhythm Rockers. Because Carroll played piano, Malone concentrated on guitar, which led Banks to switch to bass. After their discharge, the Rhythm Rockers ended up in Fresno, California, where they brought singer-guitarist Troyce Key into the fold.

By 1966, Malone was living in Oakland and the next year began 21 years of full-time employment as a mechanic at Alameda Naval Air Station. He found time, however, to play guitar with his friend from Fresno, Sonny Rhodes, then a stand-up vocalist recording for Galaxy, a division of San Francisco-based Fantasy Records. Malone also resumed playing piano, with his own band at the Tenth Street Inn in Berkeley. In 1972, he scored a massive Bay Area R&B hit with the self-penned Galaxy single "It's a Shame" (currently available on a Specialty CD titled Bad, Bad Whiskey). The '80s found him performing much of the time with Key in a reunited edition of the Rhythm Rockers at Eli's Mile High Club, an Oakland juke joint that Key operated from 1980 until his death in 1991.

Malone made his first trip to Europe in 1982 with a San Francisco Blues Festival tour that also featured Key and Frankie Lee. In recent years, he's returned to Europe - on tours with such performers as Fillmore Slim, Hosea Leavy, and fellow Blues Express^® artist Joe "Guitar" Hughes - with such frequency that he's lost count. Now he's ready to hit the road with his own tight band, and The Band Played On - the first album to showcase the full scope of this unique blues stylist's artistry as a singer, pianist, organist, guitarist, harmonica blower, songwriter, and bandleader - serves as a first-class calling card.