It’s a slow Thursday at B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted Street in Lincoln Park. There isn’t much of a crowd, but bassist J.W. Williams and his band are cooking–and the guitarist is positively on fire. Digging into the strings of his Fender Telecaster, Shunsuke Kikuta channels the crying vibrato of B.B. King one minute and the piercing attack of Albert Collins the next.
For a musician with such a mastery over the music, Kikuta has come a long way to Chicago.
It would be coy to say that “Shun” is the best blues guitarist in town from Tokyo. But there are blues-scene insiders who rate him among the city’s top players. Certainly Koko Taylor does — Kikuta has been a mainstay in her band for the last five years.
Kikuta is one of a handful of bluesmen from other countries who have made their way here to the “home of the blues.” And like immigrants who have studied English so carefully they speak it better than the natives, some of these musicians play the blues with more authenticity than the Chicago born-and-bred artists.
Veteran B.L.U.E.S. doorman Mark Skyer says that describes Kikuta. “If Shun is on stage playing in a band with another guitar player, odds are he’s the one with the most authentic sound,” he says.
Blues music itself has traveled too. It originally migrated north to Chicago from places such as Mississippi, Memphis and New Orleans, brought by African-Americans in search of work and roughly following the route of the Illinois Central Railroad. And its impact has been felt thousands of miles away, exported along with jazz as uniquely American music.
“Blues transcends barriers of language and culture,” says Bruce Iglauer, president of Chicago-based blues label Alligator Records, whose roster includes Australian blues guitarist Dave Hole. “It’s an intensely emotional music, and the emotions can be understood even if you can’t understand the language.”
Kikuta, 39, initially came to the United States to study jazz at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. But jazz went by the wayside the moment he heard B.B. King’s classic “Live at the Regal” album.
“It just blew my mind,” says Kikuta. “It had all the emotions human beings have — happiness, sadness, anger — all packed into one.”
Kikuta was under blues’ spell. Upon graduation, he packed everything he owned into his Subaru and headed to Chicago, where he got a job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant and haunted blues clubs at night.
When he was laid off two months later, he played on downtown streets and subways for tips. Some days he made barely enough to pay for a slice of pizza.
“It was still better than washing dishes, though.” Kikuta says. “At least I was playing music.”
Eventually Kikuta began to gig regularly with Williams and singer Nellie Travis. He also noticed an interesting phenomenon.
“Before I came here, I thought the blues guys played very traditional blues, like Little Walter, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf,” he says. “But the fact was that many of them played R&B, funk and rock-style blues.”
In between gigs with Taylor, Kikuta sits in with Williams regularly at B.L.U.E.S. He’s recorded several solo albums and hosts a syndicated blues radio show broadcast in Japan.
“I feel very honored and lucky,” he says. “I’m not the most talented guitar player in Chicago, but I have a lot of love and respect for the blues. And I think that comes out in my playing.”
Catch “Shun” Kikuta 9:30 p.m. Thursday with J.W. Williams at B.L.U.E.S., 2519 N. Halsted St.; $5, call 773-528-1012.
Chicago is also a long way from the small village of Misgav Dov in Israel. That’s where Guy King, 28, grew up. Originally a clarinet player, his initial exposure to the blues was through American jazz musicians such as Count Basie. But after hearing one of his brother’s Eric Clapton albums, he switched to guitar and delved into the music of Clapton’s influences, especially B.B. and Albert King (no relation to B.B.–or Guy) and Delta bluesman Robert Johnson.
“When you come from a place where you don’t have the luxury of hearing live blues, your only references are the records you have at home, which you treat like the Bible,” King says.
Two weeks after his mandatory stint in the Israeli army ended in 1999, King arrived in the U.S. with a black Fender Stratocaster in hand. He spent brief periods in Memphis and New Orleans before arriving in Chicago. In short order, he began to sit in on open stage nights at clubs such as Buddy Guy’s Legends and Rosa’s Lounge, where he met harpist Little Mac Simmons and bassist Aron Burton. Burton immediately offered him a gig. He also played regularly with bassist Willie Kent.
King returned to Israel when his father became ill. He was working as a fruit picker when Kent called to offer him a full-time gig. With his parents’ blessings, he returned to Chicago and has since played in Kent’s band for five years. Although Kent has missed gigs of late due to an illness, his band still plays Mondays at B.L.U.E.S. and Thursdays at Blue Chicago.
King says his home country has never been an issue; his skin color only rarely. Mostly he finds the blues to be colorblind.
“When I joined Willie’s band, I was the only white guy,” he says. “If you play a black joint on the South Side, they may look at you funny at first, but as soon as they see that you can play, all the barriers come down.”
Guy King plays with Willie Kent and the Gents 9:30 p.m. March 6 and March 20 at B.L.U.E.S., 2519 N. Halsted St.; $5, call 773-528-1012. Also 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Blue Chicago on Clark, 536 N. Clark St.; $6, call 312-661-0100. Also 9:30 p.m. Thursdays and March 24-25 at the neighboring venue of Blue Chicago, 736 N. Clark St., $6-$8, call 312-642-6261.
Tony Mangiullo owns the popular Northwest Side blues club Rosa’s Lounge. For him, the blues was an escape from his native Milan, Italy.
Mangiullo, 47, and some high school friends formed a blues band in Milan after hearing an early Fleetwood Mac album (before the band’s soft-rock days), recorded in Chicago with Chicago blues icons Willie Dixon and Otis Spann.
“Blues became our passion,” says Mangiullo. “It expressed how we felt. We were not black or victims of discrimination, but the similarity was our intent to break away from what we thought was a repressive system.”
Mangiullo’s first exposure to live blues was fortuitious. At a 1978 jazz festival in Italy, he met the late harpist Junior Wells. Wells gave Mangiullo his phone number and told him to look him up if he was ever in Chicago.
“That moment changed my life,” says Mangiullo. “For years I had an image of what an American bluesman was like–wise, loving and with a great sense of humor. And that’s exactly how Junior was.”
Two months later, Mangiullo showed up on the South Side with a backpack, an Italian-English dictionary and a few hundred bucks. That night he tracked down Junior at the legendary Theresa’s Lounge, where he sat in on drums at the end of the night.
“It was a dream,” he says. “Here I was playing on my first night in Chicago with some of the musicians I had idolized on records.”
Like Kikuta and King, Mangiullo became a fixture in the clubs, and got gigs with everyone from piano master Sunnyland Slim to harp genius Big Walter Horton and Muddy Waters’ right-hand man, guitarist Jimmy Rogers.
Six years after arriving in the Windy City, Mangiullo decided to concentrate on business. He and his mother Rosa opened the club named for her. But he hasn’t stopped playing; you can still finding Mangiullo laying down the beat every Thursday at the club’s open jam.
Tony Mangiullo takes the stage 9:30 p.m. Thursdays at Rosa’s Lounge, 3420 W. Armitage Ave.; $5, call 773-342-0452.
Mangiullo had Junior Wells for his introduction to blues, Kikuta had B.B. King. If you’ve been out to blues clubs around Chicago recently, you may have heard a less-authentic brand of music — too many places serve up a no-name journeymen on automatic pilot singing “Sweet Home Chicago.”
Seek out these players for a little originality in your next night out. You’ll also find musicians who know their Muddy Waters from their Howlin’ Wolf. Chicago sent out a unique musical form into the world, and now some world-class musicians are bringing it back.
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