It`s a typically cold, windy winter night in Chicago. At the door of the club, you can feel the heat from the stage inside. Inside the music gets louder.
”Stir it up,” someone is singing, ”Little darlin`, stir it up.”
Wait a minute. That`s a Bob Marley song. Isn`t this a blues club? And what is this blues band that plays reggae?
”The Kinsey Report,” which appears Friday at FitzGerald`s in Berwyn, quite naturally mixes Rastasfarian and other rhythms into blues. It comes from the years of experience this family band has had playing in rock and reggae bands and working with artists such as Albert King, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. But their ability to play the blues has made the Kinsey Report one of the hotter young bands in the Chicago area. In concert or on the band`s recently released Alligator Records debut album, ”Edge of the City,” the musicians take a tight, high-energy approach to everything from traditional Delta to funky contemporary blues.
Growing up in Gary, brothers Ralph, 35, Donald, 34, and Kenneth Kinsey, 25, who, with longtime friend Ron Prince, comprise the Kinsey Report, were immersed in the blues from their earliest years. Their father, Lester ”Big Daddy” Kinsey, played music constantly and encouraged the boys to make music on their own.
”My dad`s early beginning in music was from the church,” said Ralph Kinsey. ”The problem for him was, coming out of a gospel background, his parents didn`t want him to play the blues. They considered it the devil`s music. So he didn`t really get a chance to express himself that way. It was always in his mind that if he ever had sons and they were musically inclined, he would let them play what they wanted to.
”I remember this well. I was 3 or 4 years old. I would get butter knives and just beat on my mother`s chairs and tables. So my dad said, `He`s going to be a drummer,` and he went and bought me a toy set of drums. After that I kept playing. I really enjoyed doing it. And by that time Donald was playing the guitar.”
Soon Big Daddy, Ralph and Donald were performing at church services, socials, gospel radio shows and, when the boys were older, clubs and summer tours of the South. Before long they wound up recording, thanks to performer Eddie Silvers.
”What a great saxophone player this guy was,” Donald Kinsey said. ”He wrote the first big hit for the Jackson 5, `I`m a Big Boy Now.` He started playing with our group. He was with us about six or eight months, then he told Big Daddy, `I would like to try to put together a thing with the kids.`
”We went into the studio and did a thing called `Gimme a Funky Cold Duck.` Boy, if you could hear it! That was the first time we went inside the studio, and that was really an experience.”
The Kinseys continued performing until the early `70s when Ralph joined the Air Force. Soon after, while taping a television show in Chicago, Donald was introduced to Albert King.
”He came over to Gary and saw another gig,” Donald said. ”Two o`clock in the morning after we got home, my dad called me downstairs and said,
`Albert wants to know if you can go out on the road with him.`
”You`re joking.”
”No. Go upstairs and pack your bags!”
”That`s when it really hit me that music was really going to be my thing.”
Donald Kinsey worked with King for nearly three years, playing on his 1973 Stax LP, ”I Wanna Get Funky,” credited as Donald ”Kenzie,” and on a live album recorded at the Montreux Festival the next year.
”It was a great experience,” Donald said about working with King. ”He taught me a lot about playing the blues, too. I remember when I got my first electric guitar, I was so excited, but after I played it for about three or four years, I started making excuses. `I can`t get that sound. I need a Gibson (guitar).`
”My dad kept listening to this, and one night he brought in a guy. This guy sat in and played my guitar and, boy, did he make that guitar sound. I stopped complaining ever since.
”I`ve seen the same thing with Albert King. I said there has to be something in this guy`s guitar that`s special. Then one day I saw him pick a guitar off the rack, turn that joker upside down and play it, and it sounded like Albert. The guitar can deliver it, if you know how.”
After his stint with King, Donald joined Ralph and bassist Busta Jones from King`s band in White Lightning, a hard-rock power trio. The group did one self-titled album for Island Records produced by Felix Pappalardi, Mountain bassist and producer for Cream, and recorded at Sam Phillips` legendary studio in Memphis. They opened for Peter Frampton, Aerosmith, Yes, Jethro Tull and others. But fame was not in White Lightning`s forecast.
”It was straight-ahead heavy metal rock and roll,” Ralph said. ”But in those pre-Prince days, neither promoters nor audiences quite knew what to make of them. I think we were ahead (of our time). We were the first black band that Island signed in America. It was really hard for them to market us. Our picture wasn`t on the album, and when we`d get to the gig and these three black guys came out playing rock `n` roll, it was just a shock.”
Through Island, Donald Kinsey met Bob Marley. Soon after he was invited to the studio in which Peter Tosh was recording his ”Legalize It” LP.
”I went over there and met Peter,” Donald said, ”and we got to chatting and playing acoustic guitars for a while. And finally I guess he said, `This guy`s okay.` The next thing I know, I was in there recording on that album.”
With White Lightning on the verge of collapse, Donald accepted Tosh`s offer to embark on a year-long tour. He next found himself unexpectedly summoned to Miami to play on Bob Marley`s ”Rastaman Vibration” LP.
”I hadn`t heard the tracks, (but) I instantly got into the groove of the music,” Donald recalled. ”I often use the term `Jamaican blues` for reggae because it seemed to come out of the same spirit. I guess that`s why I was able to blend into it so easily with my blues roots. In no time we did the album, and I got into the whole Jamaican scene. Then Bob asked me if I would tour with him. I did the Rastaman Vibration tour and stayed with Bob for about two years.”
Donald also was present when gunmen attempted to murder Marley in 1976.
”We were rehearsing at his house, and we just so happened to take a break,” Donald said. ”Good thing, because if everybody had been in the same room, it would have been a real massacre.
”I was in the kitchen getting something to drink, and Bob was in the kitchen. We started hearing gunshots go off. There was a back door, and as soon as I thought about going out that door, this guy came inside and started shooting. We couldn`t go anywhere.”
Unhurt but deeply shaken, Donald decided to return home. But his reggae career was far from over. Before those two giants of reggae died, Marley of brain cancer and Tosh shot to death last September, Donald had the opportunity to work with them on several other projects-Marley`s last tour, Tosh`s 1978
”Bush Doctor” LP and subsequent tour opening for the Rolling Stones, his
”Wanted Dread or Alive” tour and the ”Mama Africa” LP.
At the same time Donald was playing in a reggae-and-rock band, the Chosen Ones, with Ralph and guitarist Ron Prince. The band played in the San Francisco area for several years and recorded an EP before breaking up in 1981.
Ironically, after all their musical experiments and experience, the Kinseys are finding their greatest success with the music they played in their youth. Together again in Gary, the family band began to work in earnest. In 1985, Big Daddy released his debut Rooster Blues album, ”Bad Situation,”
backed by the Kinsey Report.
On their own, the Kinsey Report appeared on last year`s Alligator Records ”New Bluebloods” compilation of young Chicago blues talent. That, and Donald`s guest appearances on albums by Alligator artist Roy Buchanan, eventually led to the Kinsey Report`s first LP, ”Edge of the City.”
An abundance of original material, a tight, crisp sound and an impressive range of styles make ”Edge” one of the more promising records from a new Chicago blues band in some time.
Youngest brother and bassist Kenneth Kinsey attributed the group`s skill and growing popularity to ”our blues foundation.
”I think that`s one of our greatest assets,” Kenneth said. ”We have Big Daddy doing more of the traditional, Delta type of thing, and the band comes out and does more of a contemporary, funky type of blues. Regardless of what age you might be or where you`re from, somewhere down the line, we`ll play something that you can relate to or that you like.”
”With us being brothers,” Ralph said, ”a lot of times we don`t have to say anything. We can just look or give a certain sigh, and the other ones will understand without saying a word. It`s a natural kind of communication.
”I think all musicians have it, but, being brothers, I think we have just that extra little something. And Ron is just like family, too. We`ve been playing together for so long that the communication has the same feeling.”
Maybe it`s that unique ability to communciate that gives the Kinsey Report that special ”edge.”
”Even if it`s a ballad, it (our music) still has a certain drive to it. We`re a pretty hard-driven band.
”When I was a kid, we used to rehearse, and Big Daddy would take us through all kinds of things. He would turn the lights out on us. It would be pitch dark, and we`d have to be tight.
”He`d always be saying, `You`ve got to push. You`ve got to drive.` Yeah, that would really describe it-a lot of energy in what we do.”
