Marin’s ‘queen of Texas blues’ honors the blues greats who inspired her on new album
Angela Strehli, Marin’s "queen of Texas blues," is releasing this month “Ace of Blues,” her first solo record in nearly two decades.
On my way to interview singer Angela Strehli about her new album, “Ace of Blues,” her first solo record in nearly two decades, I stepped inside the front gate of her Novato home and came upon a package the size and shape of a vinyl LP that had just been delivered to her front door. As luck would have it, it was the test pressing of “Ace of Blues,” a tribute to the blues masters who had inspired her to become a singer — originators like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Otis Rush, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Clay and Jimmy Reed.
Within minutes, Strehli’s husband, Rancho Nicasio owner Bob Brown, who conceived and produced the record, had it on the turntable. The opening track, a faithfully recreated rendition of the 1961 Bobby “Blue” Bland ballad “Two Steps from the Blues,” filled the room with the energizing sound of a blues band in full flight, a soaring horn fanfare setting the stage for Strehli’s throaty, smoldering vocal, a voice that Buddy Guy calls “tough, soulful and sexy.”
“Ace of Blues” will officially be released on Nov. 18, four days before Strehli celebrates her 77th birthday. I should say that for as long as I’ve been a fan and a friend of hers, which is going on 35 years now, it still astounds me that a voice with such authentic blues feeling could come from this petite, elegant, soft-spoken, quietly gracious woman.
“These songs are such a deep part of her,” says Mighty Mike Schermer, her lead guitarist and band leader. “Her singing of them is really strong.”
That first track is the tasteful beginning of an album that honors many of the blues greats who the Texas-born singer befriended and shared the stage with in the 1970s and ’80s at Antone’s, the famed Austin blues club she co-founded in 1975 with the late Clifford Antone. Forty-seven years later, it presents blues to this day.
“That was like blues college,” she remembers. “I got to see my heroes. There were tons of students in Austin, and Clifford thought, if I can present blues on a proper stage in a proper place and charge very little money, maybe I can educate people about the music.”
A particularly eager blues student was a young Stevie Ray Vaughan, who hung out at Antone’s in the hopes of picking up tips from guitarists like Albert King, one of his idols. But it was Strehli who helped him become a lead singer and bandleader, instructing him to learn to sing one song until he knew it dead cold.
He picked “Texas Flood,” a Strehli favorite that she sang in every show. Vaughan ended up recording it as the title track on his debut album, turning it into one of his signature tunes. After he became a star, he didn’t forget Strehli’s guidance and support, and took her on tour, having her perform with him at Austin City Limits and Carnegie Hall.
It’s still hard for her to talk about his untimely death in a 1990 helicopter crash when he was 35. It took her three years to write a tribute to him, “SRV,” a poignant musical elegy that closes the new album.
“Who knows what he could have done with his career?” she says. “He had already made such huge jumps.”
Devoted to the blues
Strehli is reminiscing while sitting at a large dining room table littered with photos, books, albums and memorabilia from her lifelong devotion to a genre of indigenous American music that was originated by African Americans in the Deep South in the 1860s. A century later, it was in danger of disappearing for lack of new blood until young devotees like her, many of them White, reached out to these neglected blues pioneers, treating them and their music with reverence and respect.
She became particularly close to Muddy Waters, first meeting him in a Chicago nightclub on a YWCA trip when she was a college student barely out of her teens.
“He was sitting at a table before the show,” she says. “I told him I come from Texas and I want to hear real blues Chicago-style. He loved that, of course. That broke the ice.”
Years later, Waters played three nights at Antone’s with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, celebrating his 60th birthday. After she and the house band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, opened the show, she was invited to sit in with him during his set. On the new album, she covers his version of the Willie Dixon tune “I Love the Life I Live.”
“Blues purists thought that if you weren’t raised in desperate circumstances and had the wrong color skin, you couldn’t or shouldn’t be trying to play blues,” she recalls. “I didn’t argue that point. I didn’t think that was unfair necessarily. But the masters themselves ended up being the ones embracing us because their kids and grandkids didn’t want that music. They felt that it was for old people, for grandpa. It wasn’t hip anymore. Since they didn’t have the interest, a lot of people like Muddy started to think, ‘These kids are really interested in learning it right. They’re studying it.’ So they took us under their wing.”
On that same Chicago trip when she was in college, she ventured into Silvio’s, a West Side club that was the den of the intimidating bluesman Howlin’ Wolf. It was New Year’s Eve and everyone, except her, was dressed to the nines.
“I had seen a couple of films with Wolf sitting in a chair, blowing a harmonica,” she remembers. “But on this night, he was stalking around the stage, playing the guitar, at one point crawling up the curtain. He was scary. It was mind-blowing. I was cowering in the back.”
Growing up in Lubbock, Texas, best known as the hometown of Buddy Holly, young Strehli was captivated by Wolf when she first heard the blues on her short-wave radio coming from faraway stations in Shreveport and Nashville, and from Wolfman Jack’s Mexican border blaster XERB.
On “Ace of Blues,” she covers Wolf’s “Howlin’ for My Darling,” the only song on the album that she’s performed live many times in her career.
On the track “Ace of Spades,” a rollicking rendition of an O.V. Wright R&B classic, she vamps a verse about how the old blues guys gave her the nickname “Ace,” finding it easier to say than Angela.
A blues education
The daughter of a college professor father and mother who founded a preschool, Strehli graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in sociology and Spanish.
After college, her musical education began when she was invited to join the soul/R&B band James Polk and the Brothers, becoming the only White singer in a Black group. After two years with Polk, who had been the organ player for Ray Charles, she sang with Sunnyland Special, a band that played the prestigious Southern California clubs the Ash Grove and the Troubadour, and later the popular Austin group Southern Feeling. With her own Angela Strehli Band, she won five consecutive best female vocalist awards from the Houston Chronicle. Around Austin, she became known as the “queen of Texas blues.”
In 1987, she started Antone’s Records, a label that recorded blues veterans as well as young performers. Strehli’s debut album, “Soul Shake,” was released on the label, followed by “Dreams Come True” with fellow Texans Lou Ann Barton and Marcia Ball.
In a bit of serendipity, “Ace of Blues” marks the relaunch of Antone’s Records by Nashville-based New West Records.
“I never would have imagined anything like this,” she says. “It’s such a full-circle feeling.”
The extensive album package features historic photos from Strehli’s career as well as a full-color booklet with notes on the dozen songs on the record.
After her last solo album, 2005’s “Blue Highway,” Strehli has focused her energies on being the gracious hostess of Rancho Nicasio, the West Marin roadhouse she operates with her husband, singing only occasionally with the Blues Broads, a quartet with Tracy Nelson, Annie Sampson and Dorothy Morrison.
Last year, she sang a guest set at Rancho with the Mike Schermer Band, getting a standing ovation. That’s when she and Brown knew she could still bring it vocally at age 76. With plans to make a tribute record, they began going through their vinyl collection, picking songs by blues artists that most people probably hadn’t heard before. Last December, they went into Laughing Tiger Recording Studios in San Rafael to record “Ace of Blues,” using two groups of top Bay Area musicians, including former Huey Lewis and the News drummer Bill Gibson and local piano legend John Allair.
“I had already written songs about my life and whatever I had to say about it on previous records,” Strehli says. “So this was the logical thing to do, the missing link that I was able to fulfill. You really have to acknowledge the ones who inspired you.”
“Ace of Blues” will be available through digital retailers and streaming platforms, on compact disc and standard black vinyl on Nov. 18. A limited 500 blue vinyl edition will also be at independent retailers and is available for pre-order at newwst.com/aceofblues.
After a short tour, which includes a pair of shows at Antone’s, the club she co-founded in Austin, she returns to the Bay Area for the following appearances: Yoshi’s in Oakland on Dec. 1; Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz on Dec. 2; and HopMonk Tavern in Sebastopol on Dec. 10.
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net