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IT AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT THE BLUES 

Raunchy, gritty, swollen with heartbreak and soaring with praise…what’s not to like about the blues?  In the roof-raising Broadway musical, It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, you can feel every bit of the down home, sweet home, sanctified, and low-down, blues that have given the soul to American Music.

Nominated for 4 Tony Awards including Best Musical, It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues is a hand-clapping, cat calling crash course in the history of this American musical tradition.  This rip-roaring revue is “rich, evocative and rousing…more than a musical feast…its songs soothe the ear, work mischief on the funny bone, and always raise the spirits” (The New York Times).  Starting with African chants, this show traces the birth of the blues in the antebellum cotton fields of the south to its migration from the Delta to the hot clubs of Chicago.

Bursting with more than 40 blues numbers, It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues is nothin’ but the best.  With the slow burn of songs like “My Man Rocks Me,” “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” and Etta James’ sweet sizzle “At Last,” this musical revue is as potent as mojo in a pair of alligator shoes.  But what would the blues be without songs of lovin’ no-‘count women and lying, cheating, men?  It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues boasts the anthem of lost love with Roy Hawkins’ “The Thrill is Gone” and W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”---and a trip through the greasy slide guitar of the Delta blues that turns up Robert Johnson’s “Walkin’ Blues.”