Back In The Swing

Back In The Swing

Southwest Airlines SPIRIT Magazine

February 1998

By Ellise Pierce

In the cavernous foyer of Chicago’s Field Museum, the black tie attired crowd is bobbing up and down on the dance floor like Halloween apples in a barrel. En Masse, they look like yuppie soup – girls with Jennifer Anniston hair swishing across their cheeks and guys with thick necks and slightly misshapen barber cuts, looking quintessentially Midwest. They hold one another and awkwardly swirl around in their rented tuxes and just-bought dresses, nearly all of them mouthing the words to the songs they spin.

Buzz, buzz ,buzz, will you be my Honey?

Buzz, buzz, buzz, I’ll be your little bee,

Buzz, buzz, buzz, will you be my Honey?

I’ll buzz, buzz, buzz, ‘til you belong to me.

But the real buzz tonight is the band, and the reason why most of the audience have come out for this $65 per person charity event – the Mighty Blue Kings, a home-grown swingin’, jump-jive band whose jazzy, bluesy, big band sounds are on the verge of blasting past the borders of local stardom. While their first CD, Meet e in Uptown (R-Jay Records), cracked a local Tower Records top-twenty list, they’ve been playing to sold-out, standing room only crowds from Los Angeles to New York City.

Together for just two years, the Mighty Blue Kings have opened for Tine Turner and Pete Townsend, played at Johnny Depp’s terminally hip Viper Room in West Hollywood, toured Ireland, and are featured in David Schwimmer’s movie, Kissing a Fool, to be released this year. Schwimmer, a big fan since he heard them play at The Green Mill, bought fifteen CDs and created a spot for them in his new film. Other celeb fans include Oprah Winfrey, Sandra Bullock, Ethan Hawke, Kevin Costner, and Marisa Tomei.

Give a listen, and you’ll see why. The band has a fresh, clean sound, complete with saxophones and steel brushes across an aqua drum set – retro but recharged Nineties.

“The kind of music they represent has a lot of roots in Chicago – R&B, blues, and Chicago blues – and it’s a highly exportable commodity,” says Howard Reich, jazz critic for the Chicago Tribune. That’s why they’ve built up an incredible following. It’s music that people are comfortable with.”

The Mighty Blue Kings are led by crooner Ross Bon, who’s the undisputed force behind the group. As he sings “Put Your Hand In Mine,” Bon’s baritone voice pours over the crowd like chocolate: full, rich, and thick. One by one, women leave their dates and line up near the stage and swoon. Little wonde. He’s not just handsome; there’s something, well, Cary Grantish about the guy. Wearing a vintage suit on his battleship shoulders and six-foot frame, and slicked –back hair with an impetuous curl that falls every now and then into his soft brown eyes, he’s downright dreamy, you might say. If that is, you are Doris Day.

The next day, over a late lunch at a Chicago vegetarian restaurant Bon shows no signs of the all-nighter he pulled after the band’s three hour set, putting the last touches on their new CD, Come One, Come All (R-Jay Records), which was released in November 1997. Out of vintage clothes and in jeans, a khaki shirt, and sleek black horn-rims, his voice still has that late-night quality, like it was formed from many years of smoky bars and last-call whiskeys.

But he’s just twenty-five. And he has been singing for only six years. He assembled the band from jazz and blues musicians that he met while hanging out in Chicago clubs – the oldest member of the band is thirty, the rest are in their twenties.

“ A lot of our appeal is we are all young and we have a young audience, but to me, what we do is for everybody. People come up and say, ‘Oh my kids would love this,’ My parents would love this,’ I teach second grade class, and my kids know all the words to Rag Mop,’ says Bon. “That’s amazing.”

Let’s get this straight. The Mighty Blue Kings swing, but don’t call themselves a swing band. Trendy is not what they want to be.

“The swing scene bothers me because that’s not what this music is about,” says Bon between bites of a spinach salad. “I want to really try and touch people with songs that they can relate to; it’s not this ‘Hey, daddy-o’ kind of thing,” he says, twirling his finger in the air for emphasis. “It’ fun. It’s a struggle for us because I don’t want to be a part of a scene – the grunge scene was here, the rap scene was here, the punk scene was here and where are they now? They’re gone. Give me fifteen years and I’ll be forty, and I’ll be playing music. That is what we do.”

What the Mighty Blue Kings do is give a good show. While the band’s audience translate in CD form, one gig will convince you that these guys love what they’re doing.

“I think any great musician that’s out there has a great entertainment quality about them, and I like to play music for people that musicians can enjoy as well,” says Bon. I’m serious about the music that we play. I think people like our shows because we’re just not up there ‘wakka-wakka-wakka.’ We’re having a good time.”

Bon, the fifth of seven children spent much of his childhood on Chicago’s South Side listening to music his older siblings played – the Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, Van Halen, and Bad Company, all blues based bands – but it wasn’t until he enrolled in junior college at nineteen that his interest in music began to develop.

He started going to Checkerboard, a legendary Chicago blues bar, every Tuesday night to listen to the post-war Chicago blues sounds of Buddy Scott, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells. Every Tuesday became every Tuesday and Thursday, and soon every night of the week he was driving from the suburbs into the city to listen and hang out with the musicians. At the same time, he was teaching himself to play the harmonica at home.

“I picked it up on my own, listening and imitating other players,” he says. “It was the same with my singing. I listened to Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Williams, etc, and I would imitate their styles to develop my own.”

He went on the road with a band that needed a harmonica player, but when the touring gig was over, Bon began to play and sing wherever he could find a gig. When he wasn’t playing, he’d work construction jobs to make ends meet.

Along the way, Bon met up with bass player Jimmy Sutton, whose interest in jazz and blues were similar to his own, and the two decided to form a band – The Mighty Blue Kings. (Sutton has since left the band.)

Then, he put an ad in the paper advertising for other musicians, which is how saxophone player and drummer Jerry DeVivo became part of the group. When Bon heard him warming up, he signed DeVivo up immediately.

“Either people click or they don’t,” says DeVivo. ‘It’s like trying to make a relationship work. There’s got to be chemistry there; you can’t force it.”

At the time DeVivo was enrolled in jazz a studies program at a small college outside of Chicago and was waiting tables, working as a part time police officer, and practicing sometimes for as much as seven hours a day. But he loved what he heard with the newly formed group, and he found time to rehearse with them, too. After about a year of juggling jobs, music, and school, he realized that it would be impossible to maintain his 3.75 grade point average. DeVivo eventually left the other jobs and put school on hold.

What he shares with the other members is a passion for the music they’re playing and a dedication to growing musically as a band. “We’re trying to build a future,” he says. “We absolutely, 200 percent, believe in what we’re doing If I don’t believe in what I’m doing, then why should you believe it?

They began playing to small Tuesday-night crowds at The Green Mill Jazz Club, one of Chicago’s oldest speakeasies, but soon the word spread.

“You couldn’t get a seat in The Green Mill unless you were forty-five minutes early,” says jazz critic Reich. “People are so hungry for that positive attitude…. I think the Mighty Blue Kings convey an excitement and an optimism that you just don’t usually encounter in pop music these days. It’s become sort of fashionable to be dour and dark and angry, and these guys aren’t afraid to offer something else. And people responded to that immediately.”

What they played then was much like the mix that appears on the first CD – original materials written by Bon, as well as Percy Mayfield, Jimmy Lunceford, and Sonn Rollins covers.

“My goal as a band would be to play everything from Muddy Waters to John Coltrane, which is a pretty big goal, but at the same time, we’re achieving small bits at a time,” says Bon. “That’s what the band’s about. It’s about playing American music.”

Although Bon writes much of the music the band plays, according to DeVivo Bon welcomes input from the other members but has the final say.

“Is Bon a perfectionist?” says DeVivo. “Oh, yeah but so am I. If it ain’t right, I don’t want my name on it either. You have no business calling yourself a professional if you’re not a perfectionist.”

Two months later, on Saturday night at Cubby Bear, a 1,200-capacity sports bar, a standing room only crowd of mostly twenty somethings swills long neck beer purchased at various troughs set up around the club to serve the masses. They are wearing jeans and flannel shirts, twin sets in cotton-candy colors, and hair to both men and women, with a bit too much spray.

Most are no doubt regulars of the bar, which caters to fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, but tonight they’re here to cheer on the Mighty Blue Kings in celebration of the release of their new CD.

It’s 12:30 a.m. when Bon and the band take the stage, surrounded by a thick wall of adoring girls, many of whom have pushed their boyfriends a row or two back.

As Bon claps his huge cymal hands, the audience, like an eager congregation, awaits its next cue. They sing along softly with him when he asks them to and fill in the chorus on other numbers.

It’s totally interactive. Tonight, there is no dancing, simply because there is no room. At 2:30, after the band has played every song in its repertoire, Bon breaks into a wide grin and says breathlessly, “Goodnight, Chicago. It’s good to be home.” He pushes his curls back off his face and leaves the stage.

Meanwhile as the crowd begins to disperse, a few couples clasp hands and start to dance, sliding effortlessly and perhaps unknowingly across puddles of spilled brew on the concrete floor.

The Mighty Blue Kings will do that to you.

Mighty Blue Kings: From Uptown to Downtown

Illinois Entertainer

December 1998

Mighty Blue Kings: From Uptown to Downtown

By: Adam St. James

Confusion will surely overtake the random visitor to one new music industry website (www.mightybluekings.com). Its graphic designers have come up with a speakeasy door manned by a bouncer who grills callers with a curt “What band are you here to see?” A pull-down menu offers the habitué an amusing multiple choice reply: Massive Blue Things, Mighty Green Guys, Missing Red Boys, Mighty Be Blue Kids, Morbid Blue Queens, and the most persuasive comeback, Mighty Blue Kings. But a miscalculated phrase elicits the rejoinder. “You got the wrong place kid,” followed by an abrupt lockout. It’s as good as guaranteed this won’t be the only time an uneducated dullard mis-labels one of Chicago’ latest musical successes.

No, that trend is already in full swing, so to speak. Were it not for The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s remake of Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive, An’ Wall,” the Mighty Blue Kings could have escaped the misfortunes of artistic stereotyping. Were it not for the Oregon’s Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and their hit single “Zoot Suit Riot,” the Mighty Blue Kings would not be contemptuously drubbed, in their fancy grown garb, as eager to cash in on the chic-est of fashion fads. And were it not for Royal Crown Revue’s scene in Jim Carey’s 1994 movie The Mask, or Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s lengthy role in 1996’s Swingers (as well as on an early 1998 episode of “Melrose Place”), the Mighty Blue Kings would not find themselves lumped into the inevitability-to-come-and-go swing revival.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly where many – including some decision makers at the band’s new record label the Work Group (a Sony subsidiary) – are trying to place them, and its irks MBK founder and frontman Ross Bon like a chilled martini down the front of his three-button Armani.

“It’s really hard trying to fight this,” Bon says, a hint of exasperation zipping down the phone lines from the dressing room of Denver’s Bluebird Theater, where he and his four-year old band are readying for one of the final shows of their fall tour. “You’re trying to fight this stampede coming at you, and you can’t do it. But the best way to deal with our plight, as for not being pigeon-holed, is that we stick to our guns. We have to stick to what it is we want to do.”

What Bon wants to do is sidestep the association with the suddenly ubiquitous swing movement seen Lindy-hopping across the country. But his band dresses much like the kingpins of that scene, they cite many of the same influences, employ the same instrumentation, practice similar arrangements, and they popped up at roughly the same time as that genre was beginning to pull a sizeable hipster following. Still, Bon demands the world accept that the Mighty Blue Kings are not a swing band.

“Call it what it is: it’s rhythm and blues. It’s blues with jazz elements. Blues and jazz, that makes rhythm and blues. That started with Louis Jordan, but our show is not just Louis Jordan. B.B. King was a huge influence, Jimmy Witherspoon was a huge influence, Big Joe Williams was a huge influence.” Some might be dubious, but Bon’s case is strengthened by the Mighty Blue Kings’ just released Live From Chicago. The 13-track disc was recorded in Chicago August 15 at Metro and clearly falls closer to B.B. King’s classic 1965 effort Live at the Regal than it does to the nitro-jive that fuels Royal Crown Revue’s The Contender or The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s The Dirty Boogie.

“On that first tune, ‘Buzz Me,’ those are B.B. King’s arrangements,” the 26-year-old singer points out with pride. “Those horn parts, that’s the feel. That’s rhythm and blues – not to be mistaken with R&B. They call Boyz 2 Men and shit like that R&B. But rhythm and blues doesn’t exist any more.”

Except at a Mighty Blue Kings concert, And those events should become unmistakably more crowded in the near future. Live from Chicago, the Kings third self-released album on their own R-Jay label, will benefit from the nationwide distribution reach of Sony’s Red Ink ancillary. Besides earning the band scores of new fans, Bon expects the disc to bridge the gap between the Kings Come One, Come All album, which was released in November 1997, and the group’s pending major label debut. That offering may be a while in the making though. If a new disc hits the stores before the conclusion of this century, Bon will be satisfied.

“I’m in no rush to put our a record,” he explains. “I don’t have to put it out in order to jump onto something, or to appeal to this group or that group. I want to put out a good record that, no matter when it comes out, it’s going to be good. I don’t want people just to buy it because that’s what’s hot. Because as soon as something gets hot, it cools off just as quick. I want it to come out and live and breathe on its own.”

That may require some lobbying on Bon’s part. Since hooking up with Sony and the Work Group, he has frequently haunted the label’s Los Angeles offices, attempting to enlighten the staff as to the differences between his band and those Louis Jordan / Louis Prima / Cab Calloway copycats to which he feels MBK is mistakenly compared.

“ I spent a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, and I was at the office almost everyday working on this live album, getting people to see me there, to know who I am, who the band is, and what we’re about. And it’s not a militant or belligerent thing. I just want to take the time to make everybody aware of what it’s all about. The label’s a very powerful tool, and I want them to understand what we’re about so when they go to bat for us, they’re saying ‘Look, this is the Mighty Blue Kings. There’s nobody else like the Mighty Blue Kings. This is what they do. Enjoy it, take it home with you.’ That’s how I try to work against being pigeonholed – by being stubborn.”

He’s stubborn on behalf of his whole band, of course. When bon becomes bullheaded about the direction his career is being driven, his obstinacy also voices the concerns of guitarist Gareth Best, bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Jerry DeVivo, pianist Greg Smith, organist Chris Foreman, and saxophonists Geof Bradfield and John Sandfort. Protecting the group’s interests during their run to the big leagues has taught Bon much about the music industry, and not al of it positive. But when few would be so naïve as to expect wine and roses with every ride in the starmaker’s limo.

Article continued……

Rhythmic Royalty “Mighty Blue Kings mesmerize; Staples Singers slump

Rhythmic Royalty

“Mighty Blue Kings mesmerize; Staples Singers slump

Chicago Tribune

By: Howard Reich – Tribune Arts Critic

Chicagoans hold great affection for two bands that played the Ravinia Festival on Wednesday evening, in part because each has brought the sound of this city to listeners around the world.

If the up and coming Mighty Blue Kings and the venerable Staple Singers didn’t perform equally well, at least both drew on distinctly local blues, gospel and jazz traditions. So this concert, despite its flaws amounted to an informal homage to a long heritage of music made in Chicago.

By far the stronger set belonged to the Mighty Blue Kings, even if the band was hampered by an unbelievably sedate audience. Anyone who has attended the Kings’ shows at the Metro or Skyline Stage knows that an enthusiastic crowd can inspire these musicians to turn in viscerally exciting work. The uptempo tunes to a little faster, the jump numbers take flight just that much sooner when the Kings are cheered on by their subjects. With the Ravinia crowd mostly sitting on its hands, the band didn’t have the opportunity to create the kind of frenzy that has marked its best shows. Nevertheless, there was much to recommend this set, most notably the vocals of Mighty Blue Kings singer-bandleader Ross Bon.

Though Bon always was a capable vocalist, he’s now singing like a dream. His voice has gotten a bit deeper and more resonant during the past couple years, his phrasing shows more finesse and nuance.

Moreover, Bon sounds completely at ease and unhurried in front of the microphone, his most mellifluous lines recalling a young Dean Martin.

Whether he was dispatching an MBK standard such as “Grinnin Like a Cheesey Cat” or re-interpreting the Blood, Sweat & Tears anthem “Spinning Wheel,” Bon easily cut through the band’s often-thick instrumental sound. More important, he did so not with volume but with the power of projection and self-dramatization.

With just two original members among its instrumentalists (guitarist Gareth Best and drummer Jerry DeVivo,) the MBK’s sound has changed from a few years ago. The instrumental approach now is lean, bracing and often virtuosic.

The MBKs are evolving. Though the band still recalls a gloriously innocent moment in American pop music (the late 1950s, when jump music hadn’t eclipsed by nascent rock ‘n’ roll), much of the MBK repertoire shows more harmonic sophistication and melodic finesse than in the past. Furthermore, the band has benefited enormously from the addition of Chris Foreman, a savvy Chicago organist whose blues-drenched solos and lush chordal backdrops bring character and context to virtually every piece. Add to the mix a sharp, three horn front line, and the Kings clearly have a great deal to say.

How Blue Can You Get?

Chicagoland "In The Mix" Entertainment

February 98

How Blue Can You Get?

By: Odysseus Johnson

“The Right Reverend Deacon Doctor”

With Chicago’s Mighty Blue King, there’s not one band in America that closed our 1997 with more promise The sextet rang in the New Year at Chicago’s posh Fairmont Hotel playing their usual brand of no-holds barred R&B. With the joing filled to the rafters with their rabid, adoring fans, the band certainly had every reason to kick back and enjoy this one.

Their newest release, Come One, Come All had been released to almost universal critical praise during 9 straight sold out nights at Chicago’s premiere clubs, which included House of Blues, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Cubby Bear, and of course, the band’s old Uptown haunt, The Green Mill. Plus, with sales topping over 50,000 units sold, in less than two years since their independently released debut, Meet Me in Uptown, The Mighty Blue Kings also celebrated their recent signing with media power-house Sony / Work Group Records. Having the opportunity to discuss the band’s conquest of Chicago, with frontman Ross Bon, I was particularly impressed with the maturity, broad range of influences and vision that this compelling 25 year old band leader provides as he has guided the Mighty Blue Kings ascent to most influential “new” band on the scene.

As Ross Bon describes the impact that his idols, bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon, Junior Wells, Little Walter, and B.B. King, have had on his music, it is impressive to hear how much of their scope he has absorbed. At so young an age, as frontman for The Mighty Blue Kings, he is primary torchbearer for these legends. Born in Chicago, Bon spent his teens growing up in Missouri and New Jersey before returning to the Windy City to attend DePaul’s School of Business. Prior to matriculating as a freshman, Bon became enamored with the allure of Chicago’s bustling blues scene. Quickly befriending local “blues brothers” Joe and Nick Moss, he formed a bond with these kindred spirits and quickly absorbed many of their influences. “As guitar play for Buddy Scott, Joe turned me on to his influences, which were Otis Rush and Freddie King, while as keyboard player for former Muddy Waters sideman Will “Big Eyes” Smith, Nick (Moss) turned me on to Pinetop (Perkins).”

Bon’s stylistic development occurred as musician and frontman for Willie Smith. This is where pursued an involved study of Chicago harp masters, Little Walter, Big Walter and Junior Wells, plus, he studied the artist whose music as a bridge between jazz and contemporary blues and who provided much of the stylistic foundation for the Mighty Blue Kings, the legendary T-Bone Walker.

As Bon’s reputation as a frontman spread, he was called on by long-time friend, future Mighty Blue Kings guitarist, Gareth Best, to play some steady out-of-town dates. Delmark recording artist Dave Specter also saw and heard something “special” in Bon’s style and offered him a spot as frontman for his band The Bluebirds. “I didn’t want to say I would record his (Specter’s) next album and then be unable to tour and support the project.” It was becoming increasingly evident that Bon’s vision was solely directed at this concept of The Mighty Blue Kings. “I loved ballads, slow blues, boogie and straight-ahead Chicago blues, the Blue Kings were a way to let it all “hang out”. The band was a pipeline straight from the “source” of my influences.”

Since their debut, as an opener for Junior Wells, at his birthday party, on January 21, 1995, the Mighty Blue Kings have never looked back. In March of 1995, after taking over Tuesday nights at Uptown Chicago’s legendary Green Mill, they developed the night into a two year stint of sell outs.  The band’s formal “coming out” party came at the Aragon Ballroom on March 23, 1996 where the band played to a sell-out (3,500) for the release of their self-financed, self produced debut, “Meet Me in Uptown.” With a rabid, rapidly growing legion of fans whose core cut across all demographics, the critics and nay-sayers began lining up to take their potshots. Harshest criticism has come from the staunch dyed-in-the-wool blues and jazz purists like Delmark Records founder Bob Koester who claims, “I saw them on TV and thought it was like some kind of vaudeville act.” Obviously, criticisms like these ignored the nationwide buzz that the band was getting. The Mighty Blue Kings were drawing the attention of an audience much broader than simply a jazz or blues crowd, and without the attention of any commercial radio airplay. Sellout concerts and outdoor festivals, were being attended by dead-heads, grunge-rockers, bikers, businessmen. Bon and his band’s philosophy is simple, “We’re not trying to create a sound that critics and other musicians ooh and aaah over, rather we try to create music that reflects our influences and is about having a good time. If you’re impressed, cool.”

After several hundred gigs that have included features at America’s premiere venues, TV appearances, as well as tours of Europe, Bon isn’t content to let the band rest on it’s laurels. Despite the Phenomenal success of Meet Me in Uptown, and out of the box impact of Come One, Come All “we needed to connect our vision with someone who could take this concept to a bigger level.” As an independent act, no matter how successful, commercial radio fails to add music by independents to their playlists. This is largely due to the fact that FM radio is far removed from when it was “underground” and free to reflect the tastes of it’s air staff. With commercial radio playlists tightly controlled by a handful of unimaginative “consultants,” radio programmers act as nothing more than roadblock, keeping a quality band like The Mighty Blue Kings from reaching a broader audience by denying airplay because they lack corporate backing to get it.

With this in mind, The Mighty Blue Kings management company, Chicago based Green Arrow Entertainment, took the band’s case to the next level. Their national buzz was enough to start a bidding war among the major record labels to secure their services. Sony / Work Group won the rights to The Mighty Blue Kings, and according to Bon, it wasn’t about money. “The label saw what we were doing and didn’t try to change a thing. They saw the band, the vision, and are giving us free reign.” Bon says “within two weeks of signing, Sony was sending writers that we might be interested in, plus the A&R team wanted our lists,” quite a concept. “We don’t want to be pigeonholed, we’re not a swing band, we’re not a jazz band, we’re not an R&B band. We encompass all those things and try to stay out of any particular corner.” Bon says that a debut release for Sony should be “ready by this fall.” In the meantime, The Mighty Blue Kings, featuring Ross Bon, and guitarist Garth Best, are joined on bass and drums by Clark Summers and Jimmy Olson. The band, showcasing two of the best young horn players that I’ve heard in some time, De Paul music grad Jonathan Doyle and Benedictine University grad Jerry DeVivo, will continue touring the country in support of Come One, Come All.

February has the band playing 16 dates, primarily in the Midwest and East Coast. Their lone Chicago date is a February 10^th free show at Drink. Bon did end the interview with a wise piece of advice directed to musicians. “Prepare yourself for getting out of the club circuit, because as you progress, you are open to the whims of critics who can and will pan you. Keep your focus on the music and make yourself happy.”

Sadly Come One, Come All is dedicated to the memory of Amos “Junior” Wells, the legendary Chicago bluesman and harp master. At the time of its release, in November, Wells had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of lymphoma that carried a grim prognosis. Spending the ensuing weeks in a virtually comatose state, “Junior” passed away on January 16, 1998. With a career encompassing over 30 classic blues sides, including, “Messin With The Kid, Good Mornin Little Schoolgirl, and Hoodoo Man Blues,” Wells inspired virtually all classic blues & rock legends, plus, he remained a mentor for young turks such as The Mighty Blue Kings. There will be a column dedicated to the memory of Amos “Junior” Wells in the March issue of In the Mix.

Chicago’s New Royalty of Swing

Chicago’s New Royalty of Swing

Chicago Life Magazine

By Gillian Engberg

Winter 97 Issue

“I’ve played everywhere, and I’ve heard musicians swing as hard as they do in Chicago,” said jazz trumpeter Red Rodney. Since their first gig raised the roof off Buddy Guy’s Legends just two years ago, The Mighty Blue Kings have been setting new standards with their infectious blend of swing music, and the city has taken notice.

Take an average Tuesday night at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. A diverse crowd of fans lines up around the block far in advance to catch the band’s irrepressible stage show. The Kings have played Chicago’s huge range of venues, including Navy Pier’s Skyline Stage and the Stock Exchange Room at the Art Institute, and each performance seems to generate more buzz.

Part of the excitement is that the Kings play music that is at once familiar and completely new. “We’re not a blues band; we’re not a swing band; we’re not a jazz band; we’re not a jump band,” says Ross Bon, lead vocalist and co-founder of the band. “We do all of those things, but I don’t want to say we’re one thing because that’s subject to change. We are the new alternative; it’s different from anything that’s out there right now.”

Despite the nostalgic influences, most of the band’s members didn’t grow up listening to Little Junior Parker, Bobbie “Blue” Bland, or any other legends that you hear echoed in the band’s music. Ross Bon says “I was born in 1972. I listened to the Stones, Eric Clapton when I was little. All their music is influenced by the Blues, which is one way I got into the music – by listening to those guys.”

When asked why The Mighty Blue Kings play the music they do, Bon gets straight to the point: “because it feels good.” Bon founded the band two years ago with bassist Jimmy Sutton. Born in Chicago, Bon started playing around town with small combos and began to make a name for himself as a talented vocalist. On nights off from the bands, he would check out jam nights in local clubs to get to know the other musicians playing around the city. “I felt pretty quickly which musicians in town were serious about music and which ones weren’t.”

It was through these local jam nights that Bon hooked up with Jimmy Sutton and the two decided to form a band. “I always dreamed about creating a big sound with horns,” says Bon. “Jimmy sparked this idea and we gave each other the motivation to get the band going; he was as excited about it as I was. We had no idea what to expect though.”

Sutton and Bon added saxophonist Jerry DeVivo, drummer Bob Carter, guitarist Gareth Best, pianist Donny Nichilo, and saxophonist Sam Burckhardt, who has since been replaced by Jonathan Doyle. After seeing the band play a local “roots” night at Déjà vu, owner Dave Jemilo signed the Mighty Blue Kings to their notorious Tuesday night gigs at the Green Mill. Since then, the band’s reputation has spread with epidemic speed. Bon says, “the Green Mill really had a built in audience. You’ve got people coming in after shows at the Aragon and the Vic. After we started playing there, we really built up momentum.” In addition to regular Chicago appearances, the band has wooed the West Coast. After their debut appearance at the Viper Room in Los Angeles, they were asked to be flown out to perform on a weekly basis. Television and radio appearances have followed. They seem poised for a major invasion of mainstream music. Where are they aiming? Ever the confident frontman, Bon says: “We want to cover the world.”

Like Bon, all the current members of the band were born in Chicago, and the city’s enthusiastic, almost feverish reception continues to impress the musicans.

“We’re proud to be in Chicago, We’ve done the West Coast and we want to do the East Coast and Down South…Audiences here are different. In Chicago, everyone hoots and hollers and gets involved. In the Midwest there’s this down-home kind of feeling. This isn’t a town of name dropping, although that goes on. Basically people are just going out to have a good time. You go other places and people are more reserved. Maybe they’re mislead by our appearance. We come out with our suits and the whole thing, and they think that we’re these straight forward guys. My job is to show the audience the way.”

“My biggest challenge personally,” Bon continues, “is connecting with the crowd. It’s like being a good comedian. The trick is just being natural, not get all glitzy and show-biz. It’s not an easy job. Sometimes the audience doesn’t respond. That’s when we (in the band) motivate each other.”

A show at Navy Pier’s Skyline Stage tested the band’s ability to reach out to such a large audience. “The Skyline is huge; it has a capacity of 1500. The bigger the place gets, the farther out you have to throw (the sound). Everyone was in their seats, in their nice rows, and we started playing.”

As in the famous Carnegie Hall riot inspired by Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa’s wild performance, The Mighty Blue King’s audience at the Skyline could not be tied to their seats.

“We watched two people come down to the front,” says Bon. “The security guards were all ready to stop them, but then they realized the aisle was completely filled with people who wanted to dance.”

A list of live performers have inspired Bon to create magnetism with the crowd. “I saw B.B. King at Poplar Creek… He had that whole place riveted. It was amazing to watch. I really try to catch B.B. King and Joe Williams when I can.” In Chicago, Bon would go to blues clubs on the south side. “I’d go to see Buddy Scott, who has unfortunately passed away, at these small bars on the south side, like the Checkerboard and there might be three people there. But the band would get up on stage and really put on a show.”

Bon and the band have no trouble getting an audience excited. As their many fans attest to, a Mighty Blue Kings show is anything but reserved. Drawing all types, the shows are a circus of fun – an endless string of exuberant hijinks on stage with dancers swinging and jumping in a frenzy below. Mighty Blue Kings’s concerts feels like celebrations; they are all high spirits and driving energy without any of the corniness sometimes attached to the eras that influence them.

In collaborative live shows, Bon says, “I really like to club people over the head.” Bon adds that he gets a lot of energy from playing with bands completely different from his own. “We played a few shows with Citizen King (acclaimed Milwaukee based band also known for its combustible live shows). When Citizen King went on stage, I saw all these young kids in Mighty Blue Kings T-shirts in the mosh pit, dancing.”

With their avid following, The Mighty Blue Kings shows become a scene. But driving the energy and hijinks of these live shows is the music.

Bon says, “On the West Coast they’ve got this whole swing theme going on.  There are guys in monkey suits like it’s 1942. Everybody is dressed up. But with us its more about the music.”

The musical backgrounds of the band vary between the members Bon says, “I wanted to study the mechanics of singing, and I realized once I got into it that this is a whole new world that I want to learn more about.” The players are versatile. Bon says that in addition to singing, he plays harmonica. Tim Wilson, master harp man with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, is one of his favorite live performers. “I can pick up the other instruments in the band and play them. I love pianos. In fact,” he adds, “I’m looking for a small upright in good condition.”

The band seems to put together its tight, energetic sound with similar instinctual momentum. “I don’t talk music. I talk shapes and colors, but everyone understands,” says Bon who writes many of the songs. “I have an idea of the structure – I’m hearing this and that – and the band members will pick up the sound. There’s a lot of communication there.”

Currently, the band is working on material for a follow-up to their successful debut “Meet Me in Uptown,” recorded on an independent label. Whether or not the band releases their next CD with a major label remains to be seen. “Guys from some of the big labels come to see our shows,” says Bon. “They watch our progress. They’re interested.” As a manager John Litz says, “It’s going to be a question of the right agreement between everyone.”

Royal Blues

Chicago Magazine

Royal Blues

By: Ed Enright

December 96

If it grooves it’s good.

So might go the unspoken credo of the Mighty Blue Kings, seven practitioners of an eclectic sound you could call jazzy jump blues. They swing, no doubt about it, and they render their craft in loose, circa-forties suits – but don’t pigeonhole them as retro. “We don’t just want the ‘Hey, Daddy-o’ people to hear us,” says saxophonist Jerry “Big J” DeVivo. “This is not dated music. It is right to play this music today.”

Evidently. In just two years of the combo’s existence, fans have seen the Kings rise from weeknight bar band to major-venue headliner: a standing Tuesday-night gig at the Green Mill, a huge crowd at Aragon Ballroom, Cabaret Metro, the Vic, and Navy Pier’s Skyline Stage. And their CD Meet Me in Uptown has sold more that 14,000 copies since it’s release last spring.

Part of the group’s appeal is its accessibility. The Kings have developed a following of clean-cut college students, a few grungy twentysomethings, a high society “swing crowd” element, and a boomer contingent. “I’m attracted to traditional American music, whether it be blues, jazz, or rock ‘n’ roll, and also today’s music,” says vocalist Ross Bon.

With a couple of out-of-state tours under their belts – including trips to the West Coast, the East Coast, and England – and aspirations for a major-label recording contract, the Kings are aiming for national fame. But they’ll always call Chicago home. “Chicago is know as a fan-based town,” says Bon. “It stands strong behind teams-the  Bears, the Bulls, the Cubs – and that’s kind of what we feel.

From the Muppets to the Mighty Blue Kings

From the Muppets to the Mighty Blue Kings

By: Joseph Ursitti

1995 Dupage Arts Life

Twenty-One years old and he’s turned down MTV. He’s got three CD’s, four demos, and a wall full of awards. He’s played major venues. He’s currently recording a fourth CD. And in his spare time he’s a full-time student.

He is Jerry DeVivo, a senior jazz saxophone and drum set major at Illinois Benedictine College.

“I don’t feel successful or out of the ordinary,” said DeVivo, lounged back in his dorm room watching television. “I still want to be a college student.”

But it is difficult to be a college student when success is knocking at the door. The current band DeVivo plays with, The Mighty Blue Kings, is on the verge of national prominence.

Earlier this year, the Mighty Blue Kings, a self-described jump swing R&B band, gained local recognition with two feature articles in the Chicago Tribune, live guest appearances on WFLD’s (Channel 32) Fox Thing in the Morning and on WLUP (97.9 FM). The band was also one of the closing acts of WXRT’s (93.1 FM) Octoberfest.

Perhaps the boldest move the band has made was turning down and invitation to play at a party for MTV after the 1995 Music Awards.

DeVivo, who is one of two saxophonists in the seven man band, is not a stranger to success, but he wasn’t prepared for success to come so quickly.

“This success is difficult because school is in the way,” he said. “I wish it would have waited a couple of years. But destiny has no respect for education.”

DeVivo’s destiny was obvious at a young age.

“He was blessed with a gift and a talent,” said his mother, Rosalie, one of his biggest fans. “It is working for him. I knew he had rhythm when he was a kid. There was always music in my house – and when he used to play along with records, he did it with rhythm.”

It was his parents that sparked the musical wheel.

“My little cousin had a Muppets drum set, and I was infatuated by it,” DeVivo recalled. “So I bugged my parents, and they bought me a little drum set. And ever since then I’ve been playing.”

In 1987 DeVivo’s music career took a dramatic turn, when, for his thirteenth birthday, his parents bought him his first saxophone. The groundwork was laid for DeVivo to become focused as a two-sided musician: a drummer and saxophonist.

DeVivo said most of his musical motivation comes from his late father, Felix, who died in 1989.

“My dad was a drummer; he got me started,” said DeVivo, who during the summer lives with his mother and one of his three sisters. “He paved the road for me. I credit over half this musical talent to my parents.”

“It’s very rare to find talent that can play two instruments as well as Jerry does,” said Jack Mouse, DeVivo’s drum mentor. “He brings positive energy to every band he plays with. Jerry has his head on straight about artistic and musical priorities. He is working very hard at polishing his skills.”

Mark Colby, DeVivo’s saxophone teacher, agrees: “He’s got tremendous potential. He’s willing and eager to learn. I think if he really applies himself, he can be one of the better saxophonists out there”.

Despite the success, all are proud that DeVivo’s character has remained the same.

“I think Jerry’s attitude is just like it was before this success,” his mother said. “It hasn’t gone to his head.”

Mouse agrees: “Jerry has good moral character. He shows a lot of caring. He has a kind heart and soul.”

“Jerry is a great guy and hard worker,” Colby added.

DeVivo first made his mark at Notre Dame High School in Niles, he was named the most outstanding musician in his freshman, sophomore and junior years.

1n 1989, as a sophomore, DeVivo took first place out of over five hundred participants in Concordia University’s Jazz Sax Improvisation contest. In his senior year he was named the most outstanding saxophone and drum soloist at Rolling Meadows High School’s “Jazz in the Meadows.”

Shortly after coming to IBC, DeVivo released his first two albums, Night Scenes and Beyond the Heart, with the band Take 3. Take 3 played at Popular Creek Music Center in Hoffman Estates for the WNUA Smoothe Jazz Festival.

Last year he hooked up with another saxophonist, to play with Mark Fechner Jazz Experience on a self-titled album. In May, the Mark Fechner Jazz Experience played at the United Center before a Chicago Bulls game.

All three albums were played in Chicago on WNUA (95.5 FM), and several other markets around the country, including New York and Los Angeles.

DeVivo networked so well with his past bands that the Mighty Blue Kings came looking for him.

“Jerry is the young life of the band,” said Jimmy Sutton, co-leader of the Mighty Blue Kings. “He’s got that ‘Let’s go get ‘em’ attitude. He’s a great musician. I’m looking forward to hearing him in a few years.”

And with the sudden success of the Mighty Blue Kings, DeVivo won’t talk about his past experiences – he’ll speak only about the present.

With a mixture of hard-hitting songs and entertainment, DeVivo believes Mighty Blue Kings, playin 50s-type music, is on the verge of major success.

“This is a generation of people born too late to enjoy this style of music when they were kids,” he said. “Today’s style is alternative, grunge, hip-hop, rap and rock. They’ve never been motivated to look for our style of music. Now that we throw it in their faces, they say ‘Wow!’  We added our own ‘90’s touch to it, making it the Mighty Blue Kings.”

And to think he is only 21.