Absent friends was a recurring theme in Saturday evening's blues concert.
Local guitarist Stevey Hay having died suddenly just a fortnight before he was due to co-headline here with blues legend Muddy Waters's oldest son, Mud Morganfield, there was a space to fill. Borders blues band, the Jensen Interceptors did a fine job, their frontman Gary Martin leading in turn his own musicians and Hay's surviving band, Shades of Blue, in a set that captured Hay's spirit and enthusiasm for the music he loved with expressive songs and playing in the blues tradition.
Although he grew up listening to soul music as much as blues, Morganfield carries his late father's spirit with him, but it took a little while to emerge here. His own songs are rather workaday and they tended to be presented as vehicles for his Italian-English touring band's individual prowess as much as, if not more than, the extravagantly suited and booted Morganfield's well-modulated voice.
He bears a definite likeness to his father in profile, however, and while brief stories of Mick Jagger turning up in the Waters household and a dancing competition between two female members of the audience added to his slightly tired sounding roguishness, Morganfield's heritage only really became apparent when he sang his father's classics. I Just Want to Make Love To You, Got My Mojo Workin' and an encore of I'm a Man all carried something of Waters's passion.
Mud Morganfield
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