Blues the Way He Feels It

Larry Morrisey

Ben Payton’s blues journey led him from Coila to Chicago to Tangiers, Morocco.
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by Larry Morrisey
August 6, 2008

Ben Payton wants to change your mind about blues music from the 1920s and ’30s. The Jackson-based guitarist and vocalist encounters negative attitudes toward the genre from time to time.

“Some people, when they hear the blues, they automatically turn their nose up at it,” Payton says. He is determined to win audiences over, however. He challenges people’s perceptions with unique arrangements of songs by legendary performers like Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt.

“My goal is to add an artful feel to the old acoustic blues,” he explains.

While today he specializes in early blues, Payton was not exposed to this era of the music when he was growing up. Born and raised in Coila (pronounced “Koh-AH-lah”), a small town in Carroll County, Payton spent much of his childhood in the agricultural work cycle.

“Our lives were so wrapped up in rural living,” he says. The music he heard then was gospel, provided by his piano-playing grandmother and an uncle who performed with a local quartet.

Payton’s access to popular music radically changed when he moved to Chicago with his family in 1964. The 16-year-old Mississippi boy arrived in the city when its club and concert scene was booming. “All the music was going on in Chicago,” he says. “We would listen to anybody.”

From club shows by Muddy Waters and other bluesmen to concerts by touring acts like James Brown and Wilson Pickett, Payton and his friends were there to see them all.

A year after moving to Chicago, Payton joined a singing group in his neighborhood. He then learned guitar and started performing with friends.

By the time he was 20, Payton was playing guitar in the house bands of several show clubs on Chicago’s South Side, backing up well-known performers, such as R&B singer Otis Clay and jazz guitarist Grant Green.

Payton also played informally with local jazz musicians. These connections led to one of his most memorable gigs: In 1970, he heard through friends that the jazz pianist Randy Weston—who had moved from New York to Tangier, Morocco, and opened a nightclub—was looking for an American soul group for a long-term residency. Payton and some friends quickly put together a band and were soon on their way to Africa.

The group’s main job was playing at Weston’s club, but soon began branching out to other gigs around the country.

“We got to do some things that other groups would have given their arms to do,” Payton says. For example, they played at a club in Casablanca and for a party for Morocco’s monarch, King Hassan II.

After seven months in Morocco, Payton returned to Chicago to play in local clubs, but by then the working musician’s life was losing its appeal. By the late 1970s, he was married and active in a church. He drifted away from nightclub work and focused his musical activity at church, where he backed up the choir.

Payton worked solely as church musician for the next two decades, but in the late 1990s, he stumbled upon some “new” music. Tuning in to blues programs on public radio, he heard acoustic blues from the 1920s and ’30s for the first time.

“That music really caught my ear,” he recalls. “And from right then, that was what I wanted to do.”

The guitarist soon began teaching himself the songs of the early bluesmen. The music provided Payton with a new way to return to secular music without having to join a group. “I was tired of the loud bands,” he says. “I wanted to be up on stage by myself.”

Payton also decided during this time to return to his home state. His marriage had ended in divorce and the guitarist became eager to re-establish ties with his extended family. He moved to the Jackson area in 2004 and was soon honing his act through a weekly gig at Gravity Coffeehouse in Clinton. After a year-long residency there, Payton began seeking out other places to perform.

He now plays at a number of local restaurants and clubs around Jackson, including Schimmel’s and Soulshine Pizza Factory. He is also a regular performer at several of Mississippi’s blues festivals, including the Tommy Johnson Blues Festival in Terry.

While blues makes up most of his performances, Payton always plays some rock and soul songs to engage the non-blues fans. His sets include songs by Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and other pop musicians. He tries to adapt these songs to fit in with the others.

“I try to put the blues feeling in them,” Payton says. “But sometimes I forget about all that and just say, ‘Well, I’m going to do this the way I feel it.”

Ben Payton performs in Schimmel’s bar every Thursday from 5:30-9:30 p.m. Call 601-981-7077 for more information or visit Ben Payton.

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