Students Hear A Bluesman's Story

By LORETTA WALDMAN

Joe Bonamassa just wanted to earn enough money to buy a deluxe Nintendo game when he started playing the guitar professionally. Then he met blues legend B.B. King.

At the age of 12, his mother got a call from a promoter asking if he wanted to be the opening act at a concert at which King was the headliner. After hearing the gifted adolescent play, King was so impressed that he invited Bonamassa to tour over the summer with his band.

The gig got Bonamassa exposure on national television and a recording contract with EMI Records. Now 26, he's made five albums and spends nine months a year on the road performing with industry greats that include John Lee Hooker, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton, George Thorogood, Los Lobos and Jonny Lang.

On Friday, about 25 members of the Pulaski Middle School Jazz Band sat rapt as Bonamassa shared his story and a little of the talent that launched his early start. Each song was followed by a bit of history, tracing the evolution of the blues from a black farm hand's "field holler" to its influence on rock 'n' roll.

"I was 8 when I discovered the blues," said Bonamassa. "This is a little introductory course to the music I love."

The presentations at Pulaski and later at Roosevelt Middle School were the latest in a 60-city national tour by Bonamassa, a New York state native now living in Los Angeles. Part of the Blues in the Schools program, the visits are sponsored by the Blues Foundation, a Memphis, Tenn., based nonprofit organization promoting and preserving the history of the blues.

Wearing jeans, a blue football jersey and sunglasses pushed up into his long brown hair, Bonamassa exuded a youthful off-handedness that seemed to put students at ease. There was nothing off-handed about his performance in the band room.

Warning students that he "sings loud," Bonamassa's burst into his first number.

His eyes shut, head swaying and voice booming, students listened wide-eyed and silent. His right hand strummed frantically, while the other danced up and down the neck of his guitar.

The mournful song exemplified the traditional Delta style of blues, made famous by Robert Johnson, the king of Delta blues, Bonamassa said. Other pioneers woven into the program included W.C. Handy and Muddy Waters.

Only a few hands went up when Bonamassa asked about more recent musicians influenced by the blues, such as Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. But when he asked who knew B.B. King, every student nodded his or her head.

"B.B. King is really the ambassador of the blues," he said.

Hard work, not talent alone, propelled Bonamassa to success, he told the students. He began playing the guitar at 4, with help from his father, a professional guitarist and guitar dealer in Utica, N.Y. Instead of playing basketball after school, he practiced for six to eight hours a day, he said.

Bonamassa, who was scheduled to appear at the Webster Theatre in Hartford Friday night, said he volunteers to speak at schools as a way of giving back. At the end of each presentation, he answers questions that on Friday included how much he is paid and whether he took lessons.

"You toured with B.B. King. Can I tour with you?" asked Danny McGuire, 13. Without hesitating, Bonamassa handed the eighth-grader his guitar and listened intently as he strummed "Stairway to Heaven."

"Be yourself," Bonamassa told students considering careers in music.

"It doesn't matter if you want to be the next B.B. King, rapper, Mariah Carey-type singer or accordion superstar," he said. "If you believe in it, people will respond to it."

The words gave Danny hope.

Success in the music business seemed impossible before meeting Bonamassa, Danny said. "Now it seems I'm going to have to work hard, but it's doable."