It’s Tuesday night at the Green Mill, and the place has gone up for grabs.
The lead singer just left the bandstand with the saxophonist on his shoulders, and the tenor man is blowing like a man possessed.
Somehow, the two make their way through the mass of humanity on the dance floor, the crowd parting–in almost biblical fashion–to make way for them, while the acoustic rhythm players back on the bandstand pump out a hot-swing dance beat.
Before you know it, the aforementioned saxophonist is on the other side of the room, but now he’s standing on the bar, fancy-stepping his way from one end of it to the next–Cab Calloway-style–exhorting the crowd with one fiery chorus after another.
The audience of dressed-to-kill twentysomethings, meanwhile, is dancing, twisting, jitterbugging and otherwise celebrating the moment.
Welcome to another exultant night in the young life of the Mighty Blue Kings, a seven-man, ’50s-tinged jump band that has been raising Cain around town over the past couple of months.
Never mind that the Kings didn’t play their first professional date until last December, that they didn’t become a regularly working unit until March. With remarkable speed and apparently inexorable force, they have become a cult sensation on the verge of something bigger.
“They’re the hottest thing going right now, and I’m not saying that just because they’re at the Green Mill–they’d be hot if they were playing in their garage,” says Mill owner Dave Jemilo, who gave the Kings their first big-time gig a few months ago and hasn’t had a peaceful Tuesday night since.
“It’s amazing how many fans these guys have acquired, how fast they’ve taken off.”
More amazing is the way they’ve done it. In this grunge era, the Kings have created a stir wearing the slicked-back hair and sleekly fitted suits of an earlier, more elegant age. In these post-punk ’90s, the Kings have been packing them in playing music as sophisticated as anything by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat “King” Cole, Louis Jordan’s Tympany Five and the Treniers, to name only a few of their heroes.
“Each week, I see more kids coming in here dressed in cool suits and fancy dresses,” says Jemilo. “They look a lot like the musicians onstage.”
The chiffon skirts, lacy blouses, carefully creased suit-pants and impeccable bolo ties on view across the dance floor prove the point. The vintage martini glasses along the bar, the joyously up-tempo music on the bandstand and the palpably optimistic mood of the crowd befit the retro mood.
So what’s happening here? Is this some kind of ’50s flashback run amok, a nostalgia binge for a lost generation?
“Above all, it’s about the music,” says Holly Hill, a hard-core Kings fan who catches the band several times a month at various gigs around town, including the Sunday night shows at the Mad Bar, on North Damen Avenue.
“I’m normally a reserved person, but from the first time I heard the Mighty Blue Kings, I found myself dancing in my chair. No one can resist this music.”
But the band’s sound–with its two wailing saxophones and blues-inflected vocals riding an aggressive, acoustic rhythm-section backbeat–clearly is only part of its allure.
“When I go into the club to hear this band, it makes me feel like I’ve been living in the wrong era,” says another young Kings fan.
“This show is about getting dressed up and looking elegant and celebrating, and that’s something you can’t find that much of today.”
Whatever the reasons, the Mighty Blue Kings have hit a chord that is resounding across Chicago and beyond. Lately, the band has had trouble keeping up with its local dates while fielding invitations from out of town, and there has been talk of record deals, television appearances and the like.
Without so much as a press release, a promotional flyer or a media interview, the band has taken flight, and even its members are surprised.
“It’s amazing, considering how many people were discouraging about this idea when I first mentioned it,” says Chicago vocalist Ross Bon, who created the band with bassist Jimmy Sutton early last year and rehearsed the players intensely before going public.
“People would say to us, `You might want to rethink what you’re doing.’ “
Adds Sutton, “People told us, `You guys aren’t going to make it, you’re too big of a band. It’s going to be a wedding band.’ “
Once the Mighty Blue Kings hit the stage of Buddy Guy’s Legends, as the opening act for blues legend Junior Wells last December, however, Bon, Sutton and friends knew they were onto something.
“I was totally, absolutely nervous,” recalls Bon, whose reputation as a fine young blues singer around town helped him land the Legends date.
“So we came out there in our suits and ties and shiny hair, and I could see the people in the audience–the place was mobbed for Junior Wells–and they were looking at each other like, `What the hell is this?’
“And then we just did it. We let loose with this incredible sound, and when it was over, the audience didn’t even clap right away.
“They were kind of startled by it all, I guess.”
Recalls fan Holly Hill, who was in the house that night, “Nobody knew who the Mighty Blue Kings were or cared. . . . But as soon as played, it was like this burst of energy, and everyone in the room seemed stunned.”
When Jemilo heard the band in March, during a rockabilly evening at his Deja Vu club, on North Lincoln Avenue, he had roughly the same reaction.
“I said to myself: `Bingo,’ and I booked them on the spot,” says Jemilo, who typically lets musicians toil for long months and years before they get a booking at the Mill.
“It turns out I was right. Right away the young people, the hipsters around town started showing up for them.
“It was like a scene out of an old black-and-white movie, where people get dressed up for a night on the town and sip martinis out of the right kinds of glasses.
“The whole thing just turned everyone on.
“Since then, we also have been getting some older people in here who can hardly walk. And before long they’re jumping up and down and sweating like pigs and smiling all the way.
“But it’s mostly the youngsters who are making this band go.”
Though the band’s high energy, suave stage choreography and unabashed showmanship are important, it’s ultimately the music that gives the Kings their drawing power. Essentially, they sum up several treasured musical traditions that came to a peak in the mid-’50s, just before the advent of rock ‘n’ roll.
It was a brief but glorious moment in American popular culture, with the swing rhythms of jazz, the energy of unadulterated rhythm & blues and the aggressive beat of ’50s jump music coming together joyously in various pop tunes of the day. Think of such theatrical and decidedly historic songs as “Caldonia,” “Kidney Stew,” “Pink Champagne” and “Saturday Night Fish Fry,” and you have a rough idea of where the Mighty Blue Kings are coming from.
But the Kings bring the traditions of that era fresh into the ’90s. Listen beyond the crowd-pleasing dance beat, and you’ll hear the nearly avant-garde riffs of saxophonist Jerry DeVivo, the blues-steeped lines of reed player Burckhardt, the lean and modern vocals of Bon himself.
Even the band’s appearance suggests an unusual co-existence of past and present. The crisply ironed suits may evoke the ’50s, but the silver earrings point to a more recent time.
Why did a group of performers in their 20s get excited about a music that reached its heyday long before they were born?
“From the minute I started hearing this stuff, on CD and on videos, I thought that jump music was the greatest music in the world,” says Sutton.
“I realized right away that jump music is sexier, more risque, more on-the-edge than almost any other music around.
“But almost nobody was playing it, and Ross and I felt that it ought to be celebrated. When you’ve got something that sounds that good, why throw it away simply because it’s old?
“I suppose that’s the country we live in,” adds Sutton. “We invent something, the record companies try to make as much money off of it as possible, and then they throw it away so they can sell something new. Today, that process is faster than ever before.”
Adds Bon, “There’s plenty of depressing things out there in the world, but we’re into rising above it–that’s really what the lyrics of the blues are all about.
“We’re not into rebellion. We’re into celebration.”
THE BAND: YOUNGER THAN THEIR MUSIC
Although the Mighty Blue Kings play jump music from the 1950s–as well as original tunes inspired by that period (including the combustive “Jumpin’ at the Green Mill”)–most of the members were born in a later era. Here’s a look at the Mighty Blue Kings personnel:
Ross Bon, singer and co-leader, 23 years old, born in Chicago.
Jimmy Sutton, bassist and co-leader, 29, Chicago.
Sam Burckhardt, saxophonist, 38, Basel, Switzerland.
Jerry DeVivo, saxophonist, 21, Chicago.
Bob Carter, drummer, 43, Chicago.
Gareth Best, guitarist, 24, Chicago.
Joe Brawka, pianist, 28, Chicago.
