Edinburgh Jazz Festival

Lucky Peterson

George Square Spiegeltent

Rob Adams

four stars

THERE IS a long tradition in the blues of the entertainer, the guitar slinger who strides out into the crowd, possibly sits on a knee or two and does the show from the auditorium. Lucky Peterson takes this further than most, enjoying a beer held in one hand while fretting the strings tellingly with the other, directing his band long-distance through everything from Little Red Rooster to Johnny B Goode to Voodoo Chile, and high fiving all comers.

With his authentic bluesman’s singing and guitar playing, not to mention the keyboard skill that opened and closed this blues-soul-funk party, the Dallas-based Peterson could easily play it straight, and with the high quality of his guitar, bass and drums accomplices that would be a potentially thrilling prospect indeed.

It might not be as much fun, though, especially for Peterson whose spontaneous repertoire selections can be capricious – Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now seemed a workaday choice until he investigated his keyboard’s vocal setting and started giving what sounded like a sampled Swingle Singers some mirthful exercise – but who appears to genuinely love his job. So much so that he didn’t want to stop, even when, by the end, he was playing whatever flitted through his mind and overestimating his powers of recall.

If Gene McDaniels’ Compared to What defeated him, slow blues-hymn Don’t Try to Explain from Peterson’s Double Trouble album of half a lifetime ago had already revealed him as a more careworn but still soulful communicator and for all his fooling around, as a Hammond organist who knows what drawbars to pull to give blue notes the fullest value.