Local blues scene heating up faster than a speeding harmonica

Paul Green has that Clark Kent thing going. By day, he is a mild-mannered consultant, at night, a blues harmonica superhero.

No need to leap tall buildings when he can channel Paul Butterfield and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Green is a disability manager, working with people injured on the job. For 40 years, he has played the blues harp at the highest levels of the art. Green started his musical career in his home state of New Jersey and eventually lived and played in Chicago and Berkeley, Calif., before landing in Seattle in 1991.

The list of groups and legends with which he has performed is a living history of a musical genre. By chance, today's column appears on the one-year anniversary of the death of Northwest blues icon Paul deLay. Green describes the Portland singer and harmonica player as one of his idols.

Maybe the publication day is not happenstance, but, um, good karmonica. Or I might even say harmonic currents, but electrical engineers nabbed that first.

Green is a part of a stream of musicians keeping the blues alive around Seattle and Puget Sound.

Credit for a steady pulse goes in part to the clubs, restaurants and watering holes that regularly provide a home for the music and its fans. I recently heard Green and the band Straight Shot play at Grinders, a small Italian restaurant in Shoreline. Owner/host/blues patron Mitch Gilbert served great food, charged a minuscule cover and offered a festive atmosphere that turned two 45-minute sets into a three-hour party.

Green has played with various configurations of Straight Shot, which for the past several years has featured guitarist Gary Ballard, bassist Howard Hooper and drummer Lee Merrihew. All are veterans of a Seattle music scene that has given each musician a résumé of work with national acts.

I marvel at how all this comes together. Green and Straight Shot combine varied backgrounds of producing, arranging, songwriting and performing. They rehearse together weekly. For shows they play off a set list arranged for pacing, but might change with the audience. The results are seamless.

Green preps for a performance as if he were setting up for surgery. A dozen harmonicas of various keys are laid out on a white cloth on a music stand. Of course, he has already schlepped and wired the sound system.

All those harmonicas. He will change in the middle of a song to play different scales within a tune. Green also packs another potent musical instrument, his voice. He won the Washington Blues Society's award for Best Male Vocalist in 2004 and 2006. The award for best blues harmonica has a second home with Green.

If Green is not performing with Straight Shot, chances are he is partnering with James "Curley" Cooke as half of the acoustic blues duo of Cooke 'n' Green. They turn up regularly at Bad Albert's Tap & Grill in Ballard.

My thoughts drift back to today's anniversary of Paul deLay's untimely death. I am amazed and grateful the blues are sustained by fresh infusions of talent. Tonight, for example, at the Highway 99 Blues Club along the Seattle waterfront there is a CD-release party for Polly O'Keary and The Rhythm Method with the Morning After Horns. The festivities for "Who Needs the Blues" feature the voice and bass guitar of a young, latter-day Lois Lane. This blues diva with a notebook is a reporter and editor for the Monroe Monitor. She recalls that Green played harmonica on the title track of her first CD.

The Highway 99 Blues Club and The New Orleans Creole Restaurant in Pioneer Square offer prominent local venues for the blues. Ballard and West Seattle deliver, too. Others are farther afield. Green is playing tonight and Saturday night at Monahan's in Everett, and he is often at Engel's Pub in Edmonds.

One of the Northwest's classic blues bands is Little Bill and the Blue Notes. They are featured Saturday night at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, part of a regular musical showcase presented for free.

A most special venue is Blues Vespers at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Tacoma. The featured artist Sunday evening is Geoff Muldaur. Pastor David Brown's blues-infused community outreach was a divine inspiration.

This is no calendar, but a glimpse at the past, present and future of the blues.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is seattletimes.com">ldickie@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com