More than the blues

Inspiration for ‘Blues Brothers’ playing tonight in Smith River

Curtis Salgado: “What we do is R&B, rock and roll, soul, funk and blues —it’s all the same stuff,” Courtesy of curtissalgado.com/Ross Hamilton

When he performs in Smith River tonight, Curtis Salgado will be returning to his stomping grounds as a touring artist in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

That was when Salgado played in a couple of popular Eugene, Ore., groups, the Robert Cray Band and the Nighthawks. They would follow a circuit down the North Coast from Oregon to Crescent City, then Arcata and Eureka.

“Many, many times I’ve played through there,” Salgado said from the road on the way to Lake Tahoe earlier this week. However, “it’s been a while since I played in Crescent City. It used to be a main-stay gig.”

Salgado, a singer and harmonica player now based in Portland, and his band will be playing in Lucky 7 Casino’s Tolowa Events Center at 7 p.m.

“People who know his music are really excited about it,” said Stephanie La Torre, the advertising/events coordinator for Lucky 7. “We’re really excited to have him.”

Salgado is a staple of the Pacific Northwest music scene and is also credited with inspiring “The Blues Brothers” comedy-music act.

While known as a blues artist — he won the Blues Music Award for Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year in 2010 — Salgado said he doesn’t just play the blues.

“What we do is R&B, rock and roll, soul, funk and blues —it’s all the same stuff,” he said.

Salgado promises to “put on a strong, but kicking R&B show,” that will be mostly original music and a few covers of songs probably not known by most people, but that move him and “hopefully will move the audience.”

Curtis Salgado, left, with John Belushi in the 1970s. Courtesy of curtissalgado.com

Once every few months the events there will be a well-known act that will be supplemented in between with lesser known entertainers, she said.

“We want to bring in a variety of entertainment,” La Torre said.

Up next, will be Bobby Hendricks’ Drifters, a tribute to the ’60s do-wop group of which Hendricks was the lead singer, after the Muscular Dystrophy Association Benefit Car Show at the casino Sept. 3.

Growing up with the blues

Salgado was born in Everett, Wash., but was raised in Eugene. He grew up in a home where his  parents and older siblings listened to jazz and blues music like Count Basie,  Junior Wells, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy and the up-and-coming blues-rock Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the ’60s.

He had the love of music and also the voice and later harmonica skills to play it.

When Salgado was in kindergarten, his teacher asked him to sing a solo in a concert that was well received.

“That's when it hit me,” he said about knowing he wanted to be a musician. “Validation changes your life. I knew pretty earlier on that’s what I wanted to do.”

He was in choir and glee club. In high school, he sat in with a rock and roll band and would do blues songs and play harmonica. He entered the Pacific Northwest’s blues scene with the band  Three-Fingered Jack in the early ’70s and then joined The Robert Cray Band.

Inspiring the blues

Over the years, Salgado has performed with Steve Miller, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood, Carlos Santana, Buddy Guy and John Belushi, who took Salgado’s act and turned it into the “Blues Brothers.”

The late actor was in Eugene shooting the movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House” in 1977 when he stopped in one night at the Eugene Hotel lounge and saw the 25-year-old Salgado perform. Belushi insisted on meeting Salgado — who didn’t know the “Saturday Night Live” actor — and told him he really like his music and that Salgado reminded him of one of his friends who also played the harmonica — fellow SNL performer Dan Aykroyd.

A friendship was born and Salgado started taking records over to Belushi’s place and teaching him everything he knew about the blues.

Belushi and Aykroyd developed “The Blues Brothers,” which debuted on the comedy sketch show soon thereafter. They released the album “Briefcase full of Blues” — which was dedicated to Salgado and went double platinum — then made a movie based on the characters that was one of the highest- grossing films of 1980. Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.

Speaking about Salgado, Belushi told the Eugene Register Guard in 1979 that “he’s got a lot of appeal in terms of star quality and charisma on stage. He reminded me a lot of Dan Aykroyd That was the first thing I noticed. He had that ‘special thing,’ you know, that’s rare in performers.”

Spreading the blues

Belushi wanted to jam with the Eugene musicians. Salgado taught him “Hey Bartender” by Floyd Dixon and he was allowed to sing on the last song of a gig with the Crayhawks —  a side project of members of both bands Salgado was in — but the actor pulled out his Joe Cocker imitation he did on “SNL.”

The audience went berserk, Salgado remembered, but he was not impressed.

“I tapped his heart and said, ‘If you’re going to do this stuff,  you’ve got to do it from your heart,” Salgado recalled.

In the 1979 article by the Register Guard, Salgado relayed what happened at the next gig: “Then the next time we played with him he didn’t do that. He didn’t sound like Floyd Dixon or really do it very bluesy — he’s not a blues singer — but it was passable.”

The “Blues Brothers” shot to fame after debuting on “SNL” and brought the blues to the forefront of many people’s mind — something Salgado is still proud of today.

“It’s sometimes bittersweet,” he said. “I want to be known for my music.” On the other hand,  it was a “boost to the careers of musicians that I love and was raised on,” Salgado said. “It’s music that should always be saluted and not forgotten.”

He met Floyd Dixon at a music festival a number of years ago. Dixon told Salgado he got the biggest royalty check of his career from the The Blues Brothers’ cover of “Hey Bartender.”

Salgado said that at the time, all he was doing was turning his newfound friend on to the music of his heroes. He wasn’t expecting  to inspire something that became hugely popular, but is proud to say, “I played a part in that.”

Not singing the blues

Salgado has put out a number of albums over the years. His latest, “Clean Getaway,” was nominated for several awards at the Blues Music Awards in 2010.

In March 2006, Salgado was diagnosed with liver cancer and was told he had eight months to live. A number of benefit concerts with his famous friends Steve Miller and Robert Cray helped fund a liver transplant.

Salgado said he feels blessed, but hasn’t written any songs about his ordeal with cancer — yet. He’d rather talk about it and the fact that every day people die waiting for an organ transplant, he said.

“I’m happy to be on the planet,” Salgado said. “I’m rich in friends and famous in the eyes of God.”

And knowing that, “I just want to play good music and take responsibility for my actions and be positive,” he said.