Muddy Waters – Page 2 – Sitting at the Foot of the Blues

Ray with Davide

If you’ve ever been blues dancing at The Joker or Blues at the Ritzy, you’ll know Ray Wallen.

If he’s not singing or playing the harmonica, he’s watching. Enjoying the music. Taking in the atmosphere.

One of the things I love about Ray’s music is that he re-works so many of the songs he sings. One of his talents is re-writing blues songs and giving them a ‘London’ spin.

My personal favourite is his Tom Waits/Ray Charles medley ‘Ice-cream Man/ Hit the Road Jack’.

Just. So. cool.

The very first time I met Ray he was playing in The Dan Nash Band at Blues Baby Blues 2013.

I was still quite new at DJing and was super-nervous until Ray popped over to ask me what I was playing. (It was ‘Crawling King Snake’ by Etta James.) He told me he was really enjoying my music.

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Rufus at Octoblues 2015

If you’ve ever danced blues in Southern Germany, chances are you’ll have been lucky enough to have danced to music played by the incredibly talented Rufus Herbertson, a blues musician from Mannheim.

My first encounter with Rufus was when I travelled to France for Blues in Paris, November 2014. He was playing alongside Annette Kuhnle who was teaching classes on styles of dancing to Piedmont Blues music.

Taking classes with a musician playing live is something quite special and his musicianship was very special too. Rufus also played an intimate acoustic set at the Sunday night party. We loved his music so much he had to perform two encores before we’d let him go.

More recently I was lucky enough to renew our acquaintance when Rufus came to play at Octoblues (Heidelberg, Germany). He played a late Saturday night set for us that was just beautiful. He coaxed a roomful of very tired dancers back onto the floor, and kept us long after we hoped to be asleep in our beds. His instinct for when to liven things up and keep us awake, and when to play quieter, dream-like music was just amazing.

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