When Greensboro, North Carolina soul-bluesman Roy Roberts was just a kid he tried piano lessons for a while but just couldn’t suffer the indignity of it all: ‘I’d be sitting playing and it felt sort of ‘……a girls thing’ to me, If you know what I mean. I’d be able to hear my buddies outside in the yard playing and hollering, having a great time. So I gave that up,’ he explains.
Tekst: Iain Patience
A few years later, however, the young, budding musician discovered guitar, taught himself how to play and was out on the road gigging, a jobbing musician with a hunger to learn and develop as fast as he could. ‘I think I was about 18 years old when I went out on the road,’ he recalls, ‘playing with Stevie Wonder, then known as Little Stevie Wonder.’ And Roberts was still a young guy when he first met up with a guy who was to become his professional music mentor, taking him under his wing and teaching him the musical ropes – the late Solomon Burke.
‘I joined Solomon’s band and he sure took good care of me. I was always, and remain, the kind of guy who plays what is wanted of me. I don’t do none of that “…..I only play what I want to play stuff,” like lots of the guys around these days. If they’re paying, they get to call the shots,’ he says, with an evident disdain for the shameless self-promotion of many younger sidemen and band-members these days.
For some time, Roberts also played and worked with Eddie Floyd. He also worked on a number of occasions with the late Otis Clay and indeed talked with Clay a few short months before he passed in January 2016. And having worked most of the local clubs and venues in his home-state, Roberts became known as a powerful, reliable professional who could be trusted and relied on to produce the musical goods when needed, a trait that resulted in him playing, touring and working with one of soul music’s truly legendary greats, Otis Redding.
‘Otis came through Greensboro and played the club I was then working with a house band. We got on real well and he liked my playing and approach. At the time he had a huge hit record out, ‘These Arms Of Mine’, and I backed him so he took me out on the road for a while with him. He was a great guy, always respectful and understanding. We were good buddies. I was real cut-up when he passed.’
That was in 1967 and following Redding’s death, Roberts decided to try going it alone for a few years, releasing a handful of single 45s – and being ripped-off by his then management, leading to him taking a bit of a break in late 1969. ‘I sat back and considered the future. Best thing I done. I opened my own record company and took control of my own stuff, with my own recording studio. I became a sort-of one-man-band, in effect. It means if you get it right – that’s great. But, if you get it wrong, you can’t go blaming anybody else. I guess I’ve got something right cause I’ve about 17 or 18 albums out so far.’
Roberts describes himself as being ‘…..a road man. I’ve been 55 years out on the road. It can get kinda tiresome but I’m used to it by now. We take to the road with gigs covering all over the USA. Sometimes it means driving for 20 hours at a time. But I can still do that stuff and often take the wheel for up to sixteen hours at a stretch myself.’
Currently in the process of cutting a new album – it’s in the bag but still to be mastered – Roberts confirms he still loves that old traditional soul sound, the Stax sound, with full-on horns in the mix: ‘You just gotta move when you hear that music,’ he laughs. And having caught the man in action live a few years ago, when he played Cognac Blues Festival in France, that is exactly what he does.
When I comment on how he ‘works the house and audience,’ he beams with clear pleasure, confirming that was one of the professional tricks he learned from Solomon Burke, himself a past-master in the field. ‘I used to watch Solomon in action and I thought to myself, “that’s what I want to do…” He had the crowd eating out of his hand He grabbed them and kept them with him till the moment he walked from the stage. He was my favourite. I learned so much from him. The trick is to keep them with you all of the way, to keep it always moving.’
Roberts is again due to arrive in Europe later this summer with a booking at Cognac Blues Festival in France, where he’s on the opening night bill at Jarnac, already confirmed. He says he’s looking forward to visiting the festival once again and had a great time when last there in 2014, and he promises to have his latest album ready for release around then.
Website Roy Roberts
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