Blues diva visits Simmons Center

Blues diva visits Simmons Center

By Jeff Kaley
The Duncan Banner

DUNCAN — How can something so sorrowful make people feel so good?

The explanation for the paradox of blues music is found in honesty and great interpretation.

And for three decades, Janiva Magness’ soulful voice of truth has been establishing herself as one of the genre’s best interpreters.

“Magness has a powerful sultry and smoky blues voice ... When saucy blues singer Janiva Magness delivers a song, you’re convinced,” wrote a Los Angeles Times reviewer.

Magness brings healing blues to the Simmons Center at 7 p.m. Saturday, when the Detroit-native, Los Angeles-resident and her band appear as the fifth act in the 2007-08 Live From the Center concert series presented by the Chisholm Trail Arts Council.

Having recently signed a recording contract with Alligator Records, the country’s premier blues label, Magness hits Duncan still riding the success of her 2006 Northern Blues Records album “Do I Move You.”

Her sixth release since 1997, “Do I Move You” was the No. 1 blues CD of the year on “Living Blues” magazine’s radio chart, another highlight on a resume that includes winning W.C. Handy Awards as Best Contemporary Female Artist in 2006 and 2007. “Scoreboard” magazine gave her its B.B. King Award for Musical Excellence; “Arizona New Times” magazine handed her its Critic’s Choice Blues Band of the Year award; and, she’s picked up a Jim Croce Award for Outstanding Achievement in Rhythm and Blues.

Along the road, Magness honed her distinctive voice as a backup singer or opening act for such blues and R&B luminaries as Otis Rush, Taj Mahal, Johnny Copeland, Bo Diddley, Robert Lockwood Jr., John Hammond Jr. and Pinetop Perkins. But she’s also shown versatility by appearing with artists like the late Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Jimmy Buffett and Brian Stetzer.

Consistent tours (including Saturday’s first-time stop in Oklahoma), a half-dozen CDs and critical acclaim have put Magness in position to join Aretha Franklin and Etta James, two of her key influences, on the pedestal of blues and R&B divas. But it’s been a long and winding climb.

“You’ve got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues,” wrote Ringo Starr. Count Janiva Magness among those who’ve antied up.

Early on, Magness was inspired by her father’s blues and country music collection, and by the vibrant music of Detroit’s classic Motown sound. By her teenage years, though, Magness’ life was in chaos.

She lost both parents to suicide by the time she was 16. She lived on the streets and was in 12 foster homes in two years. Magness became a teenage mother, bounced around from city to city, and got lost in a haze of substance abuse.

A first glimpse of a different life came when Magness attended an Otis Rush concert. “It opened up some other place in me, like letting oxygen into a sealed crypt for the first time,” she said.

Magness found a job as an intern at a recording studio and was soon working regularly as a background singer. Then, in the mid-1980s, a trip to Phoenix resulted in a friendship with Bob Tate, the musical director for the late Sam Cooke.

Another stride away from living the blues toward interpreting and singing them came in 1986, when Magness moved to Los Angeles. She eventually met and married musician and songwriter Jeff Turmes, who’ll lead the band at the Live From the Center concert.

“I have a life today I never could have imagined,” said Magness, a doting grandmother, who turned 51 last Wednesday. “The tragedies of my life no longer define me.”

What does define Janiva Magness is the strength, power and passion of her deeply soulful, emotionally moving music, sung with truth and soul-shaking talent.

She has become an explanation to the paradox of blues music.