Don’t call it a comeback
Veteran bluesman Ashford Gordon takes the stage by storm
By Stacey Wiebe 03/15/2007
The first time Ashford Gordon heard music, he knew it was his destiny.
“I just remember feeling really warm and good,” says the veteran blues musician, of his introduction to fate. “I was deeply touched right from the start.”
Gordon’s start began with a radio 50 years ago, when he was just 8. Though his destiny began to unfold in a housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, his life began to unfold on a dairy farm in Mississippi, where he worked alongside the adults and lived a simple life.
“I had a joyous time because I didn’t know anything different,” he says of life on the farm. “There were just the simple pleasures of helping my folks, playing with dogs and sitting on the porch. The country was quiet and orderly.”
And nothing at all like St. Louis, where life in the projects proved to be more than trying. Salvation came in the form of a Catholic school, where the little boy with a mixed racial background found a safe, controlled environment. It didn’t matter that the family wasn’t Catholic. “It was an oasis in the midst of that hellish place.”
Not long after his visiting grandmother introduced Gordon to the joys of music via her radio, he began singing gospel at midnight mass at the age of 8. “This is where I belonged,” he says.
The family eventually relocated to California, where Gordon became the first black student to attend Campbell’s Westmont High School. He was embraced by his fellow students, and excelled in sports and academics.
He began writing poems at age 16 and, after being turned down by a fellow classmate he’d asked to put music to his lyrics, decided he’s try writing the tune himself. “I thought, ‘Geeze, man, how hard can it be to play guitar?’ ”
Gordon quickly found out. He played his guitar for eight to 12 hours a day, until his fingers bled, and listened to the likes of artists like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan.
Though he performed throughout the ’70s and ’80s, it wasn’t until 1992 that Gordon formed his first blues band, Too Late Tomorrow. The exposure eventually led to the band backing the great Louisiana Guitar Red, and Gordon’s formal, on the road, blues education. Among the troupe’s gigs was the famed Monterey Blues Festival.
In 1995, Gordon formed the Ashford Gordon Band in Ventura, and recorded three CDs: Nothin’ But Trouble, in 1996; Somewhere Down the Line, in 2000; and Planetary Man, in 2002. Planetary Man was a special effort for Gordon, as he worked with one of his seven children, Gabriel, on the record. “We had always wanted to work together,” Gordon says.
But the string of successes stopped suddenly that same year, when Gordon underwent quadruple bypass surgery and began the long road to recovery. It was difficult for Gordon to leave the stage behind.
Now he’s back on the stage and ready to unleash his passion on new and familiar audiences. “When it’s right, there’s nothing in the world like it,” he says of performing.
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