In our time the phrase "rhythm & blues," which once meant something, is a grab-bag construction denoting just about any imaginable form of Black American popular music, even when blues is not much in evidence and on occasion when rhythm in any robust sense is only faintly audible. Few if any blues devotees in our time identify themselves as "r&b" fans. In fact, it's come to hold even less significance as a genre designation than "country." That's why the verb in the title is in the past tense. The Duke Robillard Band is doing its business at the old school: a stylistic synthesis born in the 1940s from jazz, gospel and Deep South folk music, out of which rock 'n' roll would evolve a decade later.

From their arrival in the mid-1960s, rock critics who exuded genre chauvinism -- something that would be called "rockism" eventually -- treated virtually every rival or preceding genre as valid only to the degree that it made early rockers (broadly, from Chuck Berry [blues and hillbilly] to Bob Dylan [folk]) possible. This strikes me as a singularly bad theory of music-making, and almost comically parochial. Yet it endures, sadly. They Called It Rhythm & Blues is wiser. It reminds us that, when performed by musicians who know what they're doing, older music remains thrilling and, yes, fresh.

The prolific Robillard has been issuing albums for five decades. He is, not incidentally, a walking encyclopedia of blues knowledge. There may be few, possibly no, varieties of blues he hasn't played and recorded at one time or another. I like some of his recordings more than others, not because some are more capably executed but because I favor some styles over the competition. Be assured that whatever your preference, there are Duke Robillard Band records just for you. None feels like a tourist exercise, either.

Rhythm & Blues is one for me. Decades into my amateur blues-geek career, I am captivated by first-generation electric blues, when musicians with roots in the rural South moved to the city, plugged in, and hired drummers and sometimes horn players to augment and expand their already raucous assault. The fusion of downhome and uptown never fails to stir head and gut in ways that nothing else quite manages. Here Robillard has assembled like-minded friends and veterans, among some particular favorites of mine: Michelle Wilson, Kim Wilson, John Hammond, Sugar Ray Norcia and Sue Foley, not to mention others whose names I recognize and respect without having heard as frequently as the just-mentioned.

In any event, it's a stellar assortment and an impressive collection (18 cuts) of songs and instrumentals, some in the deep, cool shade of tradition, others looking forward to the warm sunshine of the more fully urbanized blues of a future era. Of course all of these musicians have lived and worked in that future era. Thus it informs their playing, singing and arranging, but intelligently so because all concerned are educated in what influences can do, even when they're pushing back in time.

[ visit the Duke Robillard website ]