A Ray of bluesy sunshine

August 08, 2024 3:00 pm • Last Updated: August 09, 2024 10:50 am

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Sugar Ray Norcia (courtesy Sugar Ray Norcia)

Some years ago, when renowned vocalist/harpist Sugar Ray Norcia was a member of Roomful of Blues, he had health issues that ultimately necessitated back surgery.

“I was missing gigs, which I hate to do, but it had reached a serious point,” Norcia said, speaking on the phone last week from his home in Exeter, R.I. “A few minutes before the anesthesiologist put me under, they played some B.B. King and Buddy Guy in the operating room, which was so nice of them to do.”

“Amazing,” interjected the interviewer. “So, if you didn’t wake up, it would be the last thing you heard!”

Norcia laughed. “I wasn’t going to put it that way, but yeah. Blues on my deathbed.”

This moderately grim anecdote was a naturally occurring tangent in an enthusiastic conversation about what might be described as a Zen-like quality many blues musicians and fans ascribe to the genre. With its static I-IV-V chordal architecture, and lyrics that address the emotional and physical ups and downs of everyday existence, the blues are rooted in musical and philosophical purity.

At the same time, it’s that precise background formula — the familiarity and repetition of form — that allows the artist, in any particular song, to instrumentally or vocally go beyond and reach distant galaxies of expression and emotion.

Or, Norcia is asked, is this sort of analysis over-thinking the situation?

“No, it makes total sense to me,” he said. “I don’t know about the average guy on the street. Blues is not that popular in the world. But any blues musician knows. I’ve just turned 70, but the music I listened to when I was 16 and 17 is still the same. I love it just as much.

“Sometimes, I’ll turn off the lights and turn on blues I haven’t listened to in a long time, and I can feel my heart rate slow. My blood pressure goes down.There’s something about the blues that’s hard to put into words unless you get it. But it’s there. It’s definitely there.”

A blues lifer

Norcia, long associated with his band the Bluetones as well as his time in Roomful and countless collaborations and guest spots across the blues spectrum, continues his lifelong celebration Saturday when he joins Darcel Wilson and the Knickerbocker All-Stars onstage in Westerly at the Knick Music Center — not that Norcia is a stranger to the venue or the musicians he’ll be performing with.

In fact, as an underage blues fan in the 1970s, Norcia, a Stonington native, used to sneak into the Knickerbocker for those legendary Sunday shows in which Roomful of Blues held court and hosted performances by the likes of Gatemouth Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, Junior Wells, Big Joe Turner, Albert Collins, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and dozens more.

“Those shows just blew me away,” Norcia said. “I dreamed of the day I could sit in with them. After a while, it did happen — and then with more and more frequency. I’d get home and be so excited I couldn’t sleep.”

Mark Connolly, executive director at the Knick, is a longtime admirer of Norcia. By email, he said, "Having the privilege to meet and listen to many of the great blues legends that have played at the Knickerbocker Cafe, Sugar Ray, from the very beginning, was one of my favorites, giving me a great introduction to what it means to play the blues."

Solid foundation

He wasn’t unprepared when he got onstage in those early days. Norcia’s father played harmonica and was a music teacher and a vocal coach, and his mother was a jazz singer who played the Knick with her two brothers. “I heard their bands in my basement all the time I was growing up,” he said. And when some friends turned him onto blues records, “it was over. I never looked back. My father taught me the proper way to sing, and, in school, I was always the lead in the musicals or chorus. It came naturally.”

So did his devotion for the blues records he was being turned onto and discovering on his own. Norcia basically bypassed the Beatles and the Stones and the subsequent “British Invasion” because, he said, “All those bands were doing was recycling American blues — and I was already listening to the real thing.”

Norcia incessantly studied the harmonica records of the genius Little Walter, trying on his own harp to replicate the master’s licks. It wasn’t easy at first.

He laughed. “I was so naïve! ‘Why is this so hard?!’ I didn’t realize they made harps in more than one key and I only had one harp.”

Norcia was also mentored by a slightly older neighbor named Johnny Nicholas, the multi-instrumentalist who at one time owned the Knick and helped establish a musical “exchange” between the Knick and the bustling blues and R&B scene in Austin — a pipeline that sent artists like Roomful to Texas and brought the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Lou Ann Barton and Stevie Ray Vaughan to Rhody. Nicholas introduced Norcia to all these artists as well as a scene in Boston where major headliners passed through.

“Johnny was so great to me,” Norcia said. “There was no internet, so you had to figure out how to learn. And I couldn’t have asked for a better education than what I was being exposed to from Johnny and all these kind artists.”

Those rich blue tones

In 1979, Norcia formed his first edition of the Bluetones and the group immediately established a reputation for passion and authenticity; they frequently backed touring giants like Sykes, Big Mama Thornton, Big Walter Horton and Ronnie Earl. The Bluetones remain an ongoing entity with a revolving set of musicians that has included guitar fireballs like Kid Bangham, Monster Mike Welch, Tom Ferraro and Charlie Baty. Bassist Mudcat Ward and drummer Doug Gouvin have long anchored the rhythm section.

Over the years, with his fan’s appetite and a busy touring schedule, Norcia has assimilated various blues characteristics in his own sound from distinctive hotbeds like Texas, Kansas City, Louisiana, Chicago and Memphis.

“I’ve been fortunate to meet and learn from so many great blues musicians that represent those styles,” Norcia said. “I’ve gotten to play with them and speak with them and know them as human beings — and there’s that blues essence to them that we were talking about. I’ve managed to create my own sound within the limitations of my voice, but I’ve made it work and developed tone and rhythm and phrasing. It all comes full circle, but it’s taken a lot of wonderful years to get here.”

In addition to the Bluetones and his Roomful stint from 1991 to ’98, Norcia has guested on recordings by Porky Cohen, Doug James and Pinetop Perkins. Norcia is also a multiple Grammy nominee: his work on the 1999 album “Superharps” with James Cotton, Billy Branch and Charlie Musselwhite, and then in 2007 for another collaborative effort, “Remembering Little Walter,” with Musselwhite, Billy Boy Arnold, Mark Hummel and James Harman.

In April 2016, Sugar Ray & the Bluetones were inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame and have also racked up almost two dozen Blues Music Awards. Norcia is putting final touches on a new recording he hopes will be out by the end of the year.

The road goes on

“I’m very much looking forward to playing with the All-Stars Saturday,” Norcia said. “I’ll get to do some of those great Roomful-style jump blues songs and some horn section songs. Those always get me fired up. I’m also going to bring some new material that I want to test on the dance floor before we go to Romania.”

Indeed, Norcia and the Bluetones are off in two weeks for the Brasof Jazz & Blues Festival.

“It’s sort of funny,” Norcia said. “It’s a long way to go for just one set. We had hopes to expand to a short tour of Italy, but that fell through. But we’re glad to get to go. It’s a great festival and they love blues over there.”

Norcia treasures such opportunities, even as he admits he’s slowing down a bit.

“You’ve heard all the great stories about traveling and logistics,” he said. “It’s different when you’re young. But I’ll say this. Those moments onstage? Man, it makes you young again. It’s magical. You remember what the blues can do.”

He paused a moment, reflecting, then offered an expansive view of blues that extends well beyond the layperson’s erroneous belief the art form is all about sadness and down times.

“The blues are life. We all have bad days, but we celebrate, too,” Norcia said. “The blues encompasses all of that. The funny thing is, I listen to the lyrics now more than ever, and you realize the depth and variety of human emotion in the music. Admittedly, if we’re playing a wedding, it can get hard to find only cheerful material.“ He laughed. ”It’s hard to show up and play ‘Alimony Blues.’

“But by the end of the night, you have people coming up and saying how much fun they had with the music.Because that’s how it works. The form is simple, the feelings are real and — sorrow or joy — it’s ultimately an uplifting expression.”