Blue Lights At Jake's Martini Bar
by Jean Hadley
| The Blue Lights (formerly Washboard
Slim & The Blue Lights) winners of the 2008 Connecticut Blues Society
Blues
Challenge, appeared at
Jake's Martini Bar, 179 Center St. Wallingford, Connecticut on January 16, 2010. Musicians
were Peter Menta, Brooks Barnett, Howard Horn, Cynthia Fabian, Mark Kostner,
and Mark Crofutt.
For over 35 years, Peter Menta (leader) has been playing early Jazz,
Blues, Swing standards, Jug, Gospel, Rock & Roll and Pop music. Jug band music was first heard on the sidewalks of Louisville and Memphis in the late 1920's. The use of both conventional and homemade contrivances like jug, washboard, gut bucket, kazoo, guitar, keyboard, ukulele, drums, mandolin, banjo and accordion, to name a few, created the music we heard tonight. In her dialogue, Cynthia mentioned the use of 32 "instruments' for tonight's performance. The band opened with "THE BUCKET HAS A HOLE IN IT" ..... a great opening number. This got the crowd in the mood for four wonderful hours of entertainment. There were all ages in the audience and many die-hard Trad Jazz patrons filled the room. True supporters of Peter's music and Dixieland (Butch & Leigh, Ed and Sharon to name a few) were present from start to finish. The dance floor was busy the entire evening. Our multi-talented and beautiful Cynthia Fabian entertained us with her rendition of a Betty Boop song "I WANNA BE BAD". From this moment on, we heard many, many selections familiar to the audience. With Cynthia on vocals, washboard and kazoo and Peter on his washboard, drums and harmonica, add Howard on his jug and gut bucket, and the rest of Peter's talented guys, how could we not be entertained?
Here are a few of the numbers we heard....
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