It’s hard to imagine a 2-year-old child trying to imitate Louis Armstrong, but that was the beginning of a lifelong love of music for the internationally acclaimed blues guitarist and vocalist Joanna Connor.
She will share her love of that musical genre during “An Evening With: The Joanna Connor Band” April 1 at Fitzgerald’s Nightclub in Berwyn.
Connor and her band previously performed at Fitzgerald’s for the Berwyn Blues Festival in September and for several “Bluesday Tuesdays.”
“It’s a great venue,” Connor said. “It’s got a great atmosphere. We’re really excited about it.”
Connor will be bringing her regular band, which includes Dave Stephens on keys, “a 21-year-old phenom, absolutely amazing,” she said. The other band members are bassist Shaun Calloway and drummer and vocalist Jason Edwards.
The Fitzgerald’s concert will be a typical Connor Band show.
“I try to present a ballad, some classic blues, a little more funky, a little more rock stuff, some covers, some originals,” she said. “We like people to get up and have a really good time.”
Connor explains her attempt to imitate Louis Armstrong when she was a toddler by saying, “I was a strange kid. Something about that voice got to me. I don’t know how successful I was.”
Initially Connor focused on saxophone before choosing guitar as her main instrument. “I was pretty heavily into the saxophone and really thought I was going to pursue that path,” she said. “But I was never quite satisfied with my tone. I was also a singer at first. It’s a little difficult to sing and play sax.”
By the time she was 17, Connor was playing professionally.
“I was in a jazz band at school and the female drummer was starting a band when she was in high school,” Connor said. “I really wanted to be in a band.” She auditioned and was accepted. Later she began performing in a local band in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she was living.
In 1984, Connor moved to Chicago.
“I always loved Chicago blues bands that would tour back in New England,” she said. “I wanted to go to Chicago and check things out for myself. There’s Jazz Fest and all these amazing jazz and blues clubs.”
Her first gig here was with the legendary Johnny Littlejohn. A few weeks later, she joined the house band of the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side of Chicago. In 1988, she formed her own band and Connor’s career took off from there.
Connor is convinced relocating to Chicago was the right move.
“I could have been a big fish in a small pond in Massachusetts but in every way it has helped my career,” she said. “I was learning onstage from some of the masters.”
Connor and her band have shared the stage with jazz greats Luther Allison, BB King, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Robben Ford, Danny Gatton, Robert Cray, Jimmy Page, ZZ Top, Joe Cocker, and Etta James, among others.
Connor has done a lot of touring in the past but she said that she has slowed that down a bit. “I always had gigs in the city, mostly Kingston Mines and House of Blues every week,” she said.
Connor’s band’s schedule is picking up now. “We’ll be touring pretty extensively through the summer,” she said.
The guitarist and vocalist admitted that even though she has performed for over 40 years, she still gets nervous before every show.
She explained, “that’s how much I care about what I do.”
‘An Evening With: The Joanna Connor Band’
When: 8 p.m. April 1
Where: Fitzgerald’s Nightclub, 6615 Roosevelt Road, Berwyn
Tickets: $15-$80
Information: 708-788-2118; fitzgeraldsnightclub.com
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
