Best Of Blues And Rock // Edição 2013

A HISTORIC EDITION

OFFICIAL AFTERMOVIE

11th EDITION 2024

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BUDDY GUY • CHRIS CORNELL • TAJ MAHAL

NUNO MINDELIS • JOHN MAYALL • DR. JOHN

SHEMEKIA COPELAND

JUNE 10 to 13, 2013

SÃO PAULO • WTC GOLDEN HALL

The main motivation for businessman Pedro Bianco to create the Best of Blues festival could not be anything other than his passion for music. “I love blues, I love rock,” says the president of the Dançar Marketing group, who created the project in mid-2012, upon realizing an apparently untouched opportunity in the Brazilian concert market. “It was a segment that was not being explored by competitors. I thought it was worth following this path.”

This gave rise to Best of Blues, a platform that would make São Paulo the capital of Blues in Latin America. Shows with the most expressive artists in the category, photography exhibitions, film sessions, master classes and performances on the streets of the city, marking the Brazilian entertainment scene with a proprietary conceptual project that entered the country's annual cultural calendar.

Among so many challenges faced and achievements achieved, Pedro Bianco proudly evaluates his creation. “It is not a simple festival, it is a platform for cultural development, which generates content not only for those who are watching the shows, but for everyone who is interested in music.”

The shows took place from June 10 to 13, at the WTC Golden Hall, in São Paulo, with blues legend Buddy Guy, Chris Cornell, Taj Mahal, John Mayall, Dr. John, Shemekia Copeland and Nuno Mindelis.

THE BRANDS AT THE 1st EDITION OF THE FESTIVAL

BUDDY GUY

Buddy Guy took to the festival stage in white pants, a polka dot shirt and a cream Fender Stratocaster guitar, starting the show with his “Damn Right I Got the Blues”, followed by “Manish Boy”.

Thanks to his incendiary solos, by the end of the 1960s, Buddy already had a fan base of great rock stars such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Keith Richards – not to mention Jimi Hendrix, who credited him as one of his greatest influences.

Born in rural Louisiana in 1936, Guy became interested in music as a child. At 17, with his first acoustic guitar, he learned almost everything he needed to know by listening to records by T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins. When he moved to Chicago in 1957, he went hungry in the early days.
He fought hard to become known on the local live music circuit.

When veteran Chicago blues legend Muddy Waters sensed his approaching death, he made a personal request to Buddy: “Keep the damn blues alive.”

Faithful to the musical legacy of Waters, Howlin' Wolf, BB King and so many other masters, he has carried out this mission with a very special brilliance.

CHRIS CORNELL

Singer Chris Cornell performed a solo show, with just voice and guitar, at the closing of the first edition of Best of Blues. On the same night as Cornell, Shemekia Copeland and John Mayall also performed.

The musician – one of the main names in grunge, alongside Kurt Cobain, from Nirvana; Eddie Vedder, from Pearl Jam; and Layne Staley, from Alice in Chains – showed the repertoire from the album "Songbook" (2011).

The repertoire went through all of Cornell's phases, still giving space to quite varied covers, such as "Billie Jean" (by Michael Jackson, "which took on a dark tone and stopped being danceable", in the vocalist's explanation), "Imagine" (John Lennon, curiously the most sung by the public) and "Thank You" (Led Zeppelin).

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TAJ MAHAL

Taj Mahal performed on the first night of the festival, showcasing the strength and eclecticism of the blues.

The son of a jazz pianist and a gospel singer and teacher, Henri St. Claire Fredericks Jr. was born in Harlem, New York, in 1942. He took his stage name, which he adopted in the late 1950s, from a dream involving the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi and set in India.

Regarding Brazilian music, Taj says: “I always thought that, even though I didn’t grow up in Brazil, I had a huge familiarity with the country’s music. I feel Brazilian music, it touches me, it affects my emotions. It’s a music that I understand perfectly.”

Even before the concept of “world music” was coined, Mahal was already researching the musical traditions of other countries. It is no surprise that his extensive repertoire includes a variety of genres, such as jazz, gospel, R&B, reggae, calypso and zydeco, as well as Caribbean and African rhythms.

JOHN MAYALL

John Mayall, the godfather of English blues, exploded in the 1960s with his Bluesbreakers, which at one point included Eric Clapton. He led the Bluesbreakers for five decades, with several lineups and some hiatuses, recording more than 50 albums.

On the night of June 13th in São Paulo, Mayall gave the Best of Blues audience an hour of great music, with his band formed by Rocky Athas (guitar), Greg Rzab (bass) and Jay Davenport (drums). John Mayall plays keyboards, guitar and harmonica.

In the second half of the show, he played “Voodoo Music”, a classic by bluesmen Willie Dixon and JB Lenoir, as well as “So Many Rhoads”, by Otis Rush.

Great show between the talented Shemekia Copeland and the acoustic set by Soundgarden's voice, Chris Cornell.

DR. JOHN

Eccentric and talented New Orleans pianist and Grammy®-winning singer Dr. John took the Best of Blues stage on the evening of June 11.

With his deep nasal voice and original piano playing, inspired by the rhythm and blues of the legendary Professor Longhair, Dr. John was an informal ambassador for the culture of New Orleans, his hometown, which was so different from the rest of the country.

Being born into a family of amateur musicians in 1941 made life easier for Malcolm John Rebennack, who decided to pursue a career in music at the age of 14, when he met Professor Longhair.

Two years later, the boy was already performing in bars as Mac Rebennack, hiding the fact that he was still a minor. He soon began to participate in recordings with local musicians who would also become R&B and soul stars, such as Allen Touissant, Art Neville and Joe Tex.

SHEMEKIA
COPELAND

Diva Shemekia Copeland opened the last night of the festival bringing all her energy and emotion to the audience.

This talented blues singer was compared to Koko Taylor and Etta James when she released her first album, “Turn the Heat Up,” at age 19 in 1998.

Daughter of Johnny Copeland, a renowned Texan bluesman and guitarist, she was born and raised in New York, where he encouraged her to sing from an early age. Facing a serious heart condition that forced him to have a heart transplant, Johnny began taking her to sing at his shows when she was just 15 years old.

Shemekia only needed a few years to consolidate a musical career full of successes, such as sharing the stage with stars of the caliber of BB King, Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton, opening shows for the Rolling Stones and singing for the Obamas at the White House.

NUNO MINDELIS

The main Brazilian bluesman, the virtuoso Nuno Mindelis represented the country in the first edition of the festival.

The son of Portuguese parents, born in Angola in 1957, Mindelis enjoyed the privilege of having a record collection of 2,000 LPs of various genres in his parents' house.

In 1975, he moved to Canada, where he formed his first blues band, but a year later he came to join his family in Brazil.

After releasing the acclaimed albums Blues e Derivados (1990) and Long Distance Blues (1991), his talent caught the attention of the North American magazine Guitar Player, which compared him to Jimmy Page.

A few albums later, in 2019, he rediscovered his origins in Angola Blues, which includes original arrangements of songs he heard in his homeland, as well as an unusual version of “País Tropical”, by Jorge Benjor.