​A little sugar for those blues

Grammy Award-winning harmonica player Sugar Blue headlines Saturday’s Fargo Winter Blues Festival

Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Willie Dixon, The Rolling Stones: these are just a few of the bands Sugar Blue recorded with in a career spanning forty years. It’s a career that’s led to high praise for his skilled harmonica playing and earned him a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.

Saturday, Blue will perform with his band, the Sugar Blue Band, at the 16th annual Fargo Winter Blues Festival. “[He’s] one of the best harmonica players in the world,” says Dan Bredell, music promoter for Fargo Blues Fest. This will be the first time the musician has played the Winter Blues Fest, although he played the summer festival back in 1997.

While the 66-year-old blues performer is best known for playing the main riff and harmonica solo on The Rolling Stones classic “Miss You,” he’s also shared stages with blues legends, such as Muddy Waters and B.B. King, and earned several music awards.

Blue grew up in Harlem with a mother who performed at the legendary Apollo Theater, surrounding him with entertainers at an early age. He picked up the harmonica when he was young, loving its beautiful sound and portability. This led him to playing the streets of New York City for years before someone took notice and his career kicked off.

It was 1975, and Blue was busking on a street in the West Village when blues singer Victoria Spivey was passing by and liked what she heard.

“Actually, Patti Smith was there too,” Blue says. “I remember Patti ‘cause she put a fifty-dollar bill in the hat.” Spivey, who ran Spivey records with jazz scholar Len Kunstadt, knew all the big players in blues.

“She heard us and she gave me her number and said, ‘Give me a call. I want to record you,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, right.’ ” But Blue made the call and out of that conversation came the first recording he ever did.

Blue, who was born James Whiting, found his stage name by chance. He was leaving a Doc Watson concert when he came across a box full of old 78s someone had chucked out a window. The first one he picked up was “Sugar Blues” by Sidney Bechet. He felt it was perfect.

The harmonica virtuoso doesn’t shy from bringing up the names of those who inspired him, many of whom he worked with at some point. He mentions meeting Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and always enjoying Terry’s harmonica skills, which featured imitations of fox calls and trains.

“He was an incredible player,” he says. “Nobody could do it like he could.” Not even Blue, who admits that he never learned Terry’s style since he was more into playing saxophone and trumpet sounds.

While the two-time Chicago Music Award Winner can’t choose any particular recording session as his favorite — he “enjoyed playing with all of the cats” he worked with, he says — he is quick to bring up Brownie McGee again.

“Terry passed away, Brownie McGee gave me a call and I was very honored and surprised because Brownie knew all the harmonica players worldwide and he could’ve called anybody and he called me. You know, so I was really honored by that.”

Before the Sugar Blue Band takes the stage at Winter Blues Fest, The Groove Tones will warm up the audience, followed by the Renee Austin Band and then Lamont Cranston.

“Lamont Cranston is a legend in the Midwest,” Bredell says. “They’ve been around for forty years.” Like Blue, Cranston shares a connection with the Stones, having opened for them on a leg of their 1981 North American tour.

The festival will be held at the Baymont Inn & Suites ballroom for the third year and once the Sugar Blue Band is finished, local group The Blues Band will perform a free concert for ticket holders in the lounge of the Baymont Inn.

Tickets to the event can be purchased for $25 at Mother’s, Happy Harry’s, the Baymont Inn or online at fargobluesfest.com. The door price is $30, although Bredell says the festival has sold out at the door the last two years.

IF YOU GO

Fargo Winter Blues Festival

Saturday, Feb. 6, 4pm

Baymont Inn & Suites, 3333 13th Ave. S