Healdsburg Jazz Fest to honor bluesman Charlie Musselwhite

To legendary blues harmonica virtuoso Charlie Musselwhite, there’s nothing the least bit incongruous about the Healdsburg Jazz Festival hosting a tribute to him and his wife, Henrietta.

For him, blues and jazz are part of the same musical tradition.

“Jazz is all about improvisation, and I improvise all the time. I remember when all of the jazz festivals had a blues stage,” Musselwhite said from his home in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he moved last October after living in Geyserville for 30 years.

“Any good jazz player should be able to play the blues,” he added. “I don’t know why anyone would think there’s something odd about a blues player at a jazz festival. I’ve played jazz lounges around the world.”

The festival’s artistic director, San Francisco jazz bassist Marcus Shelby, heading up his second annual Healdsburg fest this month, not only agrees with Musselwhite but takes the argument a step further.

“I would say the most important part of the jazz genre is blues,” Shelby said. “You don’t have any type of American music, including jazz, without the blues. Our goal is to forward all the various aspects of this art form we call jazz through all of its cultural connections.”

This year’s festival runs Monday to June 19 and includes a concert by English jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader Dave Holland on June 18. It closes the following day with both a Juneteeth celebration and a Father’s Day concert.

The June 17 tribute to Musselwhite will not be his first appearance at the festival. He headlined the opening concert of the 2014 Healdsburg Jazz Festival, jamming with his friend and frequent collaborator Elvin Bishop, who lives in Lagunitas.

“We wanted to honor Charlie Musselwhite last year,” Shelby said. “He had been in this county for many years. I consider him part of the depth and fabric of the music.”

However, as performance venues slowly emerged from the coronavirus pandemic, Shelby opted for a truncated, scaled-back, four-day festival last year.

“Then he moved to Mississippi,” Shelby said of Musselwhite.

But that’s not keeping anyone from celebrating the internationally known blues star in the county that was his home for three decades.

The Musselwhites long have had a second house in Clarksdale, famous as the original musical playground of blues pioneers including John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. Musselwhite was born into a blue-collar family in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on Jan. 31, 1944.

“We gave up on California,” Charlie Musselwhite said. “The fires were getting closer and closer and closer every time. Here in Mississippi, it rains all the time.”

Still, he’ll be glad to be among old friends in Healdsburg.

“I’ll be there playing the blues,” Musselwhite said. “They asked me to play guitar, too, so I’ll be doing that.”

The cross-country move did nothing to slow Musselwhite’s musical career. At age 78, he continues to tour and record.

“I just put out a new album June 3 called ‘Mississippi Son,’” he said. “It’s been getting great reviews all over Europe and the U.S.”

The harmonica star isn’t quite sure just how many albums he has recorded during his long career. “Somewhere around 40,” he estimated.

In addition to his own recordings, Musselwhite has appeared on many records as a featured player with Tom Waits, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, INXS and Cyndi Lauper.

“I’ll be doing a tour with The Blind Boys of Alabama,” Musselwhite said. “They’re old friends.”

And not of all his endeavors are purely musical.

“In the fall, I’ll be in the new Martin Scorsese movie, ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ I have a dozen lines,” Musselwhite said. “I’ve been in a couple of biker movies and a horror movie, and I played a rancher in ‘Window on the World.’”

That film was released in 2019. He also appeared with a host of other blues stars in “Blues Brothers 2000.”

“I actually don’t know how to act,” he joked. “I just be myself.”

He will be celebrated for being himself at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, and he’s looking forward to it.

“Even though we moved to the Mississippi Delta, we still have a lot of friends in Sonoma County,” he said.

For more information on the festival, go to healdsburgjazz.org.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5243. On Twitter @danarts.