Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

Alvon pictures here.

On December 14, 2006 Alvon played his guitar and sang at Listen & Be Heard Poetry Café accompanied by Ron Perry on electric bass. A week or so later he confided to me that he had called several drummers to make the gig, but no one could. It was with trepidation that he came as a duo. Certainly no one in the audience was disappointed. In an intimate setting with the freedom to sing in any context he chose, he called upon a repertoire spanning a lifetime of playing music in a great variety of settings and styles. Those people who are die hard fans of Alvon the Blues singer, guitarist and entertainer extraordinaire, might be surprised to learn that his first musical hero was Roy Rogers, or that he sings a moving rendition of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” “I am what I am,” says Alvon. Since then he has taken some solo gigs including a New Year’s Eve date.

The truth is that Alvon didn’t even particularly like the Blues until he began backing up a singer named Sterling Harris at a club called the Steakhouse in L.A., but that’s getting ahead of the story…

“As a kid I used to watch TV with a Roy Rogers outfit. I was really taken with that sort of thing. I was a strange child, particularly living in the Fillmore District. I used to look at Chuck Berry also. I was 16 in 1966, when I started playing guitar. I was living in San Francisco. If there was any one particular person that motivated me I’d have to say it was Roy Rogers, to be politically correct I would say Chuck Berry. I took lessons from a guy for about a month. He taught me how to play “This Land is Your Land.” He taught me four chords, and I learned to play folk music. That wasn’t doing anything for me. James Brown was kicking then. I wanted to play this other stuff. I ended up not taking lessons anymore because he didn’t teach me what I
wanted to know. I wasn’t a great student of the guitar. It was a bit more work than I really wanted to do. Then in 71, I was going to University of Oregon. There was a band there named Coal and they needed a bass player. I figured it was two strings less than a guitar. How hard could it be? They were really desperate for a bass player. My parents were supportive. They bought me a bass and bass amp, so I played for the band. I was really motivated by my interest in girls. Nothing noble about my intentions.”

“There was a large bohemian community there of artistic people who wanted to learn music and explore. I also played percussion. Babatunde Olatunje was teaching classes at Portland State University. He and I hung out together. I had a roommate who was heavy into the acting. We had a huge house. He knew a lot of actors and I knew a lot of musicians. Babatunde came over and hung out. I think he felt sorry for me because I actually thought that I could play. One day after school he was around, and looked at me practicing, and started laughing at me. He sat me down and tried to correct me. He liked my attitude.”

“I was doing anything musical that anyone would let me do. I was singing with a big band. It was a 21 piece band, playing Count Basie or Ellington, that kind of stuff. I would be the singer. One of the first songs I sang with them was “Copa Cabana.” It had a lot of words. The standards were cool. The more popular stuff like Barry Manilow or Englebert Humperdink had a lot more words. It was a different format. When I thought I had done everything there was to do in that area, I loaded up my truck and went to Los Angeles in 1980. I worked with the Drifters and The Coasters. I played guitar.”

“In LA I worked the South East Asia show band circuit. We played the top 40, wore uniforms, did choreography, the standard showband format. There were several agents that would send groups to places Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan. Part of our regimen was to listen to the radio and learn tunes that were hot at the time. After a couple years I got kind of tired of it. I realized that if I wanted to continue in music it seemed like a logical progression to play Blues. A friend of mine, Delacy White, brother of Barry White, had a gig at a place called The Steakhouse in South Central. There were only about three places in LA supporting the Blues at the time. One musician I worked behind was Sterling Harris. He was a great entertainer. He would sing, tell jokes, dance, very engaging, excellent at embracing the audience. He understood who his audience was, the physcology of them, and he nourished the audience. He was very appropriate. Even in a juke joint I learned how to be professional, not to play down to people but be uplifting to people. The format was for the band to play for 20 minutes or so, and then Sterling would come out. It was always a spectacle the way he dressed, like someone who understood that it was his job to entertain people…you waited for him to come out to see what he was going to wear. I learned the importance of being visual also. I also learned from him that you may not be known by everyone, but the people who you are known by are the ones who give you back what you give them. It’s not about being famous, it’s about the passion that you have for what you do. What I wanted more than anything was to live this dream of doing what I wanted to do, play music. My first night I thought I was really doing something but at the end of the night an older woman named Betty pulled me over to the side, and like someone in the family said ‘I don’t know what you thought you were doing but it wasn’t Blues. You need to go home and study.’ She was right. She told me the masters I needed to listen to. I practiced, went to jam sessions at what we called ‘The Bucket of Blood.’ I began to understand the impact of the music. It was a way of life. I embraced it. I embraced the people. Most of the people I learned with were from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma. My parents were from the same place. I embraced the whole lifestyle and feeling. My approach to the music was not theoretical, it was a part of me that needed to come out. I needed to express myself and be understood. That was around 86. All this time I was also working with the Coasters, so I was doing Blues when I was not on the road with them. I was working with all the people in LA. Leon Haywood had a studio in LA. He was recording all the cats. I was one of the studio musicians. I would be on a lot of records, and doing a lot of gigs and backing them up.”

When I moved to Vallejo my parents were ill. I came here to take care of them and I stopped palying from 90-92. They kept telling me to play music, so when I started up here, I wasn’t playing Blues, I was reverting back to the top 40 thing because that’s what the gigs up here were. I played the Blues, but it wasn’t with the same passion. But when my parents got real sick, the Blues became my outlet for what I was feeling. The Blues are very giving, very tolerant. You can do whatever you want. It’s OK, especially if you do it with passion. That’s why I do it, because I can be passionate. Even the sexual innuendo may not have anything to do with sex. It’s an opportunity to put a lot of energy into something, and the audience seems to embrace that. If I just talked about my parents dying they might not want to hear, but the same feelings wrapped in another package, that’s just my way of doing it.”

“If I were to refer to myself as an artist, I would say I have grown and my brush stroke is different now. My brush stroke is more sure, it’s confident. When I say things musically, it’s clearer now. I’m comfortable in my own skin. I can stand on the stage with anybody, from the bottom to the top. If BB King is playing my voice will be heard because I am one with my paintbrush.”

ALVON unplugged will take place again at Listen & Be Heard Poetry Café on Thursday March 15, 2007. 818 Marin Street, Downtown Vallejo, 94590 707-554-4540.

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