By Ken Valenti
WESTPORT–Blues lovers can catch a movie and a concert on Friday when the Westport Library presents a documentary on blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter James Cotton, and a performance by New England music hall-of-famer James Montgomery with Beehive Queen Christine Ohlman.
The event kicks off the weekend festivities for StoryFest, the library’s annual literary celebration.
Montgomery executive produced the movie, “Bonnie Blue: James Cotton’s Life in the Blues,” about one of his blues heroes. It was released this year, but the filmmakers began pulling it together before Cotton died in 2017.
“James was still alive when we started in on the movie, so we have some great interviews from him that are priceless,” Montgomery said.
The movie traces “the untold story of James Cotton, a legend whose musical influence shaped the Chicago Blues style,” according to the Westport Library StoryFest webpages. “Cotton’s life tracks a swath of America’s history — from the post-depression cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta to tough Chicagoland’s era of brilliant artistic reinvention to today’s live music scene in Austin, Texas.”
The movie begins at 6:30 p.m. in the library’s Trefz’s Forum, 20 Jesup Road.
After the film, The James Montgomery Band and Ohlman, a longtime featured vocalist with the Saturday Night Live band, will perform a concert of songs from the movie and others that pay tribute to Cotton, Montgomery said.
They will perform with a lineup of musicians who inspired Montgomery: saxophonist Crispin Cioe, who has played and recorded with James Brown, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles and more (and who gave Montgomery his first harmonica); bassist David Hull, who had a Westport-based band named the Dirty Angels and played with Aerosmith; drummer Marty Richards, who played with the J. Geils Band for five years; and guitarist George McCann, who has played with such musicians as Steven Tyler, Billy Squier and Skunk Baxter.
Montgomery has been part of the New England music scene for decades, but he was born and raised in Detroit. Growing up there, he became intrigued with the Boston scene listening to that city’s AM radio station WBZ at night. When it came time for college, he applied to Harvard University and Boston University.
“Harvard said ‘Maybe not now’ and Boston University said ‘Come on in,’” he recalled. “So I ended up going to Boston University,” he said. Within 10 minutes of arriving, he met a guitarist, Bob McCarthy.
When Montgomery decided to make his career playing the harmonica, his father commented that he was going to be making a living with “a child’s toy.”
Well, he has. Montgomery and McCarthy – who still play together occasionally – are both inductees in the New England Music Hall of Fame. A resident of Newport, Rhode Island, Montgomery is also honored in that state’s music hall of fame.
“Along with The J. Geils Band and Aerosmith, The James Montgomery Band reestablished Boston as a major music center in the early ‘70s and they were signed to Capricorn Records, home to the Allman Brothers,” according to the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame. “First Time Out in 1973 was a hard driving, hard rocking album which introduced the nation to the band’s high energy approach to the blues.”
While cities in other parts of the country may come to mind more quickly blues is mentioned – say New Orleans or Chicago – Montgomery has found a widely diverse and welcoming music scene in New England, fueled by the many colleges and universities whose students appreciate music out of the mainstream.
“New England supports a lot of original music – more so than other parts of the country,” he said. “You can’t be in Boston without being on someone’s campus. There are so many colleges and universities that they’re able to support what would be niche music in other parts of the country.”
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