Summertime - and the living is bluesy. What better time to consider Candye Kane and big blues mamas?

The aforementioned Miz Kane - men's mag model, feminist and plus-sized beauty - has been much on my disc player lately. Her latest and best CD, Diva La Grande (from Texas based Antone's Records) is getting played on the hipper blues radio shows, and, despite a clunky cover (second in a row to undercut Ms. K.'s striking looks), it's a good buy. Candye is a serviceable blues belter with great taste in material (much of it co-written by herself) and the moxie to celebrate her deliciously luscious physique. In Diva's opening number, she spells this out:

"You need a great big woman;

You need a queen-size woman;

You need a big butt woman;

You need a well-rounded woman;

You need a great big woman

To show you how to love!"

The blues has a tradition of celebrating amplitude. Hit the archives, and you'll find repeated admiring reference to a "big fat woman with meat shakin' on her bones" (e.g., Memphis Minnie's "Ain't Gonna Marry," Guitar Slim's "Story of My Life"). Jump bluesmen regularly sang the praise of BBWs, like the titular figure in Al Hibbler's Jordan remake, "Fat and Forty." Louis' own "I Like 'Em Fat Like That" contains one of the most evocative couplets in the entire blues canon:

"When she bounces down the street,

She's a whole heap o' honey, and ain't she sweet?"

Even among contempo bluesguys, there a refreshing openness to the joys of full-fleshed womanhood. Piano man Pinetop Perkins joyfully lionizes a "big fat mama" on an Anthone's release (What do they know down in Texas that the rest of us don't?), while former Chess bluesguy Billy Boy Arnold calls for a super-sized lover in "Don't Want No Model" on his newest collection. Sixties blues fixture Taj Mahal, who early in his career remade Howlin' Wolf's classic boast song "Built for Comfort," has recorded both studio and live versions of his life plus-size paean: "Big Leg Mamas Are Back In Style Again."

It should be noted that all of these current guy songs have been done by singers who have been around the pike. Don't know of any young blues turks who've recently admitted to a love of girth - maybe they should listen to Candye.

Outside of the redoubtable Ms. Kane, the only recording bluestresses to regularly celebrate size are in the multi-racial/generational blues combo, Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women. Saffire is a wonderful group: saw 'em in concert once, and lemme tell you, the sight of bottom-heavy Andra Faye McIntosh singing "Lightening In These Thunder Thighs" is a pleasing thing indeed. Sounds pretty good, too.

I love blues music, in part, because of all the modes of pop music, it's most consistently grown in its consideration of sex. One of the other highlights in Diva La Grande is a jump blues number entitled "All You Can Eat," which may not be a feeder song but makes a food-and-sex connection that sounds great every time they play it on the radio. Down here in blues country, they play it a lot.

August, 1997

Copyright 1997 - Oakhaus Designs

---Wilson Barbers