Blue Heaven puts Salina in spotlight
By Marc Sheforgen The Salina Journal
It's tough to know what the staff of CBS Television's "60 Minutes II" news program may cram into the 11- or 12-minute feature story they're planning to air on Salina's Blue Heaven Studios.
The "60 Minutes II" crew spent Monday and Tuesday filming multiple hours
of Blue Heaven owner Chad Kassem, his assistant and musician Jimmy D.
Lane and four blues musicians in town this week to record at the former
church at 201 S. Eighth.
Their intention, said reporter Carol Marin, is to capture a story
revealing Kassem's efforts to rejuvenate blues music and the feedback
from musicians who attest that Kassem is of a different breed of record
producers - a man who treats them with respect and admiration foreign to
them.
According to Marin and producer Don Moseley, this is a hell of a good
story. But they're not the first to pick up on it. This week's media
blitz, with cameras, boom microphones, bright lights and continuous
commotion is just the latest in a barrage of print, radio and television
media attention cast upon a blues mecca in the most unsuspecting of
places - Salina, Kansas.
Moseley said he heard of Blue Heaven last fall when he was driving in
his hometown of Chicago, listening to a National Public Radio feature on
the studio.
"I couldn't stop listening," he said.
And after a steady diet of hard news, which Moseley said comprised most
of the recent "60 Minutes II" stories he's produced, Blue Heaven offered
a perfect change. And so he arranged with Kassem a trip to Salina to
see Blue Heaven at work. This week the studio was scheduled to record
albums of bluesmen Wild Child Butler and Jimmie Lee Robinson.
Throughout the two days of filming, Moseley and Marin said they found
several magical moments that they hope will transfer into a good
national news story.
Monday night, cameras rolled throughout a Cajun dinner with Marin,
Kassem, Lane, Butler, Robinson and backup musicians Sam Lay and Bob
Stroger. The group sat around a kitchen table in the basement of Blue
Heaven, everyone seeming to enjoy Kassem's favorite delectables from his
native Louisiana. Inevitably, with only a few prodding questions from
Marin, Kassem and the musicians started telling the stories that had
Moseley standing in the background licking his lips.
All of these musicians, except Lane, who is the son of legendary
bluesman Jimmy Rogers, are in their 60s and have an abundance of stories
from the days when being a black blues musician was a tough lot in
life.
The guys talked about their wild days of whiskey and women, the days of
being broke and hungry and the countless people they've met. They tried
to explain the blues to Marin.
"The blues is the facts of life," said Butler, a harmonica player and
singer whose mother, early in his childhood, started calling him Wild
Child instead of George.
Butler gave an example of how a man feeling down after being dumped by
his lady might express himself. Unexpectedly, Butler began bellowing a
few improvised blues bars.
His voice echoed off the kitchen walls and was even a bit startling as
he sang: "My baby left me this morning, and she left me feeling bad." A
smile grew on the face of Moseley as he realized his cameras had just
captured invaluable footage.
"That was perfect," Moseley said after he exited the kitchen.
'Without white people ...'
A few minutes later, Sam Lay, a drummer who has been inducted into the
blues,jazz and rock 'n' roll halls of fame, offered interesting, if not
controversial, commentary. Lay, a 64-year-old black man from Chicago,
said he has not gone to a predominantly black club to play or socialize
since 1966. That night, he and harmonica player James Cotton were both
shot, and Lay said he has not felt safe at such clubs since, despite his
confession that he now carries at least two firearms with him whenever
he ventures out.
"I will not accept a job in a black club," Lay said.
That prompted a question by Marin about what these artists felt about
the shift from a predominantly black blues audience of the '50s, '60s
and '70s to the predominantly white crowds of today. Lay said he feels
the black audiences have turned their backs on the blues in favor of rap
music.
"Black is not accepting the stuff we're playing," he said. "Without white people, we'd starve to death."
Treating people with respect
And, of course, the conversation returned to what these men thought of
Kassem and Blue Heaven Studios. Each of the musicians said that the word
in the blues community is that Kassem is a man committed to keeping the
blues alive. Also, they said, Kassem is committed to treating the
musicians differently than the producers they've worked with in the past
who tried to force them to play music they didn't like and often
shorted them financially.
"It's a step in the right direction," bass player Bob Stroger said of
Kassem's efforts. "I just want to be a part of getting it back to the
top where the blues is supposed to be."
Lay said that today, there aren't many people besides Kassem investing in the blues.
"He's the only person I know that's doing anything to help it out," Lay said.
All in all, Monday's conversations produced an abundance of usable material for the "60 Minutes II" crew, Moseley said.
But they stayed for more. Tuesday afternoon, one camera recorded the
on-stage activities of the recording musicians, while another followed
Kassem in the sound studio at the back of the church. Marin alternated
between the two spots, tapping her foot and nodding her head to the
music.
It's how you play it
Between takes of a song by Wild Child Butler and Jimmy D. Lane, Kassem
tried to explain to Marin what it was that he is looking for in the
blues. But he stuttered a bit, searching for the right words. The
essence of Kassem's operation, and what may very well be the essence of
the "60 Minutes II" story, is that the blues and Blue Heaven are about
feeling.
"It's not the notes they play, it's how they play them," Kassem said of
his favorite musicians. "It's the soul that I'm looking for, and Wild
Child's got that soul, no question about it. He may not be technically
perfect, but it's real."
The equipment at Blue Heaven is technically perfect, said CBS sound engineer Dennis Dougherty.
"The bottom line is, does it sound world class? And yes it does,"
Dougherty said. But, like Kassem, what Dougherty said he will take from
Salina is a memory not of the top-of-the-line equipment, but rather how
it is used.
"Anybody can put out the money to buy a microphone, but it takes Chad
and his crew to make the people feel welcome," Dougherty said.
From here, Marin said there will be hours of editing the hours of
footage. Eventually, it will all be boiled down to 11 or 12 minutes,
which could be quite a challenge, Marin said, considering all the good
footage she thinks they will have. She said she expects the piece to air
in about three months, although it could be much shorter or longer,
depending on the scheduling of other stories.
"60 Minutes II" airs locally from 8 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays on Salina cable channels 5 and 12.