Keith Brown brings back traditional Delta blues

" His voice is so pretty; his guitar playing is good. He's a purist at heart. "

By Heather Gates

Keith Brown walks to a different blues beat. He's not flashy. He doesn't flaunt his special talents. And never will he profess to be an expert in his field. The Memphis bluesman unabashedly says he's nothing more than a fan of the music. Ironically, he's better able to reach its gritty depth as a result.

Brown, 34, has emerged on the local club-and-festival circuit within the last two years and has quickly gained a reputation for playing a distinct style of blues. "There's no one in this region like him," says Dennis Brooks, president of the Beale Street Blues Society. "His voice is so pretty; his guitar playing is good. He's a purist at heart."

Brown's acoustic Delta blues style clearly has found its place today. "He sees a difference between himself and the old-timers. He's not fantasizing himself to be some guy out of the cotton fields," says David Evans, founder of the University of Memphis' newly revived High Water Recording Co.

Quite the contrary, Brown has had the luxury of learning from past generations' problems. Brown realizes the paths they chose and the decisions they made, which, ultimately, prevented many of them from getting ahead, Evans says.

"Many of the old-timers didn't have an education. They didn't have opportunities, and they dealt with oppression. Some were just screwed by big record companies, but some also threw away opportunities," Evans adds.

Fortunately for Brown, he's learned well from others' hardships. Despite a full-time job as a records supervisor for the University of Memphis, Brown embraces his windows of opportunities. He toured France last fall, playing mostly in smaller venues, but also opening for Little Milton in Limoges, France. Then in June, Brown won the finals of the Beale Street Blues Society's talent contest, and in November, he'll represent the city in the International Finals in Memphis.

He's also in the "discussion stage" with Evans about recording a CD on the High Water label. (According to competition rules, Brown and the other International Finals contestants cannot be signed to a record label.)

This sudden fame, according to Brown, is somewhat surprising. "The music just started happening in the last couple of years," he says. "I've been doing it for years around the house. I'd sit there, get a notion and play some Son House. I didn't know nobody wanted to hear it."

A relative latecomer, Brown got into music at age 19, when he enrolled in a beginning guitar class at the University of Memphis. The music flowed naturally, he says, and within months, he was regularly singing and playing all types of music. Soon after his initial class, Brown "tested out" of the blues, jazz, and history of rock 'n' roll music classes and moved on to real-life experiences.

He made his musical debut in 1995, at the Memphis Music & Heritage Festival. Evans, who helps coordinate festival line-ups, prompted Brown to "play a couple of tunes" because, Evans says, he needed a musician to fill space. "He played two songs. That's all I needed to hear to know this guy had it."

The next year Brown returned to the Heritage Festival to play a full set.

Although Brown still maintains a wide repertoire of musical interests, ("In one hour I'll listen to Beethoven, Chuck Berry, Skip James and Son House," he says) it's the traditional Delta blues that connects deep within him.

"Older blues is it," he says. "It's the core of popular music today. It's the deepest I've found. It's so very profound."

Brown's style reflects the raw, yet quiet intensity of such iconic bluesmen as Robert Johnson, Bukka White or Skip James. Indeed, Brown's music ushers in a romanticized notion of how the old Delta bluesman lived, carousing, gambling and fighting.

He reveres his predecessors, too. "Son House, that's my hero. He's so intense emotionally; he was extreme. It was the Delta - that is the Delta Blues," Brown says. He also notes Furry Lewis and Skip James, who possessed a mysterious and sad style of music, as legendary greats.

It's the lyrics, though, that get to Brown. True traditional Delta blues, he says, are a deep, "cerebral thing," something that takes effort in order to understand and appreciate.

Brown innately connects with crowds that share his passion for traditional blues as well. Unfortunately, those audiences are scarce, not only at clubs in and around Memphis, but around the entire United States. "Over here, there's not an appreciation for acoustic Delta blues. People want to dance and party, and to hear loud music," Brown says.

And much like his blues "forefather," Skip James, who abandoned the blues in the '30s when his recordings failed to attract audiences, Brown himself seems somewhat unfulfilled - even disappointed - by how the U.S. crowds respond to his genre of blues. "After 2-3 hours of being ignored (on stage), it drains you emotionally. You're screaming, hollering, sweating and nobody even claps or looks at you."

Brown's low-key acoustic blues, however, may enable him to carve a niche among today's generation of "revivalists," Evans says.

"He'll get lumped together with Keb' Mo', Corey Harris and Taj Mahal from my generation," Evans says. "It's inevitable that he'll be categorized this way, but within that category he's distinctive. He's very serious about his music. There's not a lot of lightweight stuff in his music."

Evans and others in the industry, like Brooks, think Brown will evolve into a concert artist, one who's better suited to live performances in small venues. "Keith appeals to a fine-arts sensibility. (The blues) will always be good dance and party music, but it has so much artistic, literary and cultural value as well. He's able to convey that visceral quality - the beat, the power," Evans says.

Brown's style, according to Evans, is desperately needed. The blues, he says, hasn't developed much in the last 30 years. "If anyone can bring country blues along, it'll definitely be Keith."