Election controversy rocks and roils Boston bluesmen

This article is very disturbing.  I can't believe that sore losers would have the low level of class to complain about losing a talent contest.  Dragging veteran musicians such as Rick Russell through the mud is nothing less then shameful! The Mike Crandall Band won this contest hands down even without Russells numbers. 2120 South Michigan Avenue is at best an ameatur "wanna be" "student" blues band and is not even in the same ball park of talent and skill that the Mike Crandall Band posess.Instead of complaining, acting like  "Blues Nazi's" 2120 S. Michigan Ave. should of worked on things like singing, learning to really play there instruments,  good arrangements, good tone and a better setlist that included actual original material not BEAT TO DEATH COVERS! Most of all it would of been good for them to learn a little about manners and dignity.

Joey Vellucci

It would appear the little Boston blues scene, of which I've been a spectator and paying customer for some 46 years (longer in years than, from my surmise, most of the audience and at least half the participants of the competing bands in the first round--the only one I attended--of this year's competition) is not only as one commentator observed "incestuous," but insular, provincial, and self-justifying... All qualities I have observed before not only about this little corner of the cultural backwater known as Metropolitan Boston. Not since the lamentable death of the wonderful (and sophisticated, worldly, cultured, and yet down-to-earth) Mae Kramer has there been, it seems, a cause for such dismay in this little overboiling tea kettle of a scene. Full disclosure requires that I tell you I am a friend of Charlie Sawyer, and for far longer (for most of those 46 years of my Boston tenure) of his wife, Cherie. Two more upright, gentle, and truth-loving people I don't know.

I don't know what happened on the second night of the competition. At the first round, Charlie's band so out-classed Crandall in musicianship, but, more importantly, in conveying and evincing a certain necessary soulfulness and depth of feeling, so necessary to the playing of "authentic" blues (and absent utterly in Crandall's very slick and professional performance) that it was no wonder that 2120 was declared the winner. Why these two bands would be matched for competition in a follow-up round is beyond me (except that it fits entirely with the arcane sort of machinations of professional sports, which gin up all sorts of complex scenarios for allowing teams already proven in previous contests to have outclassed one or the other). It would appear that for all its incestuousness, the blues scene here is not partciularly fecund in terms of generating a high enough number of bands of a certain caliber to compete.

 Beyond that, I don't know that Charlie was anything of the epithets hurled in his direction here by some of the jejune commentators (homeys, as far as I can tell), nor is he guilty of the behavior imputed by the sanctimonious, pious, and defensive comments of Ms. Nugent who, it appears, does not run a very tight ship--short or replete of resources being no justification for uncivil behavior of her own.

As for Charlie, or Cherie, or anyone else, who among us is truly in a position to make judgments about what "real blues" Ms. Nugent pontificates about any of us has suffered? This was the worst and unkindest and least professional of the spate of remarks that were untoward that issued from her keyboard here. I know of real blues that Charlie, and the several members of his band have suffered. But it's not my place to recount them, and even if it were, this kind of knowledge is reserved for friends and no one's business.

 What has a lot of growing up to do is the "Boston Blues Scene." Like the reprehensible (but humorous) Field Marshal Goering, who would react, he said, "when hearing the world 'culture,' I reach for my pistol.," when hearing the word "scene" especially in Boston, I head for the exits.

This is an unfortunate and deplorable episode. It besmirches, sullies, and leaves in question (like Roger Maris's famous eternal diminishing asterisk next to his achievement in the record books of Major League Baseball) the victory of Mike Crandall's Band. I do know this, Charlie was not bemoaning, licking his wounds, or crying foul... He was, like the scholar, artist, and scientist I know him to be, with the ability to have an open mind as required by such pursuits, and the maturity and judgment to let things pass, as he has experienced much already in his life about which he had no other choice but to do so, merely questioning the circumstances, and the impact of "even the appearance of wrongdoing" on the public, who might appreciate blues the more, of the particularly laughable, fumbling, and ill-considered doings of the denizens of this scene. It seems there was enough bad judgment, self-justification, self-exculpatory rationalizing to go around, with Mr. Russell and Ms. Nugent leading the pack. With founders like these, who needs followers?

Without being at the event, I can only only say that it seems that hdinin is just a little angry over this.

I never found Herman Goering very humorous, and can't quite make the connection between Nazi Germany Culture and the Boston Blues Scene, but the "brough-ha-ha" is an interesting read.  

There have been a lot of good points made here (in the comments) especially by Karen Nugent and "Rosy" Rosenblatt...particularly regarding the so called bias of Ricky Russell. If anything, Ricky would have been biased against Crandall's band...since there had been some tension between them ( Crandal & Russell) leading to Russell discontinuing playing with Crandal.

I wasn't there, but I know how these things can go. When it comes down to the "bottom line," there no room for cry-babies in the blues! If you lost in a competition, get over it then do better next time!

Sincerely in The Blues,

Ms Marci