MUSIC: SERVING UP THE BLUES

Eight years ago, Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe, sold his interest in the rock ‘n’ roll restaurant chain for $107 million, gave most of his money to charity and went to study with a guru in Puttaparthi, India, a remote city that is probably one of the few places on the globe where there isn’t a Hard Rock Cafe. Music had become too corporate for Tigrett’s liking; rock songs were turning up in cola commercials, beer companies were sponsoring concert tours. Tigrett wanted to get away from it all, find an ashram and meditate–and since he had profited mightily from rock commercialization himself, he had enough disposable income to finance his escape. But after a few years of respite, Tigrett’s guru gave him a mission. “My master said that this was one of the darkest periods in man’s existence,” Tigrett recalls, “and that my job was to go back into the world and create a business that can show young people you can be successful and adhere to human values.”

And what means would Tigrett employ to help lift humankind to a higher consciousness, to inspire a new generation of truth seekers? Theme restaurants.

Of course, Tigrett had been there, done that, sold the T shirt when he was heading the Hard Rock chain. His new venture would be, had to be, different. He had been studying Hinduism in India, but now he would find his inspiration in the music of the blues.

Blues music today is in some ways what rock used to be: outside the system, neglected by mainstream radio, but beloved by a small and growing group of loyal listeners. Tigrett, 47, has long been one of them. He grew up on a plantation outside Memphis, Tennessee, where he was surrounded by such music, and he sees himself as leading the crusade to bring blues into the mainstream. “I’ve been into the blues ever since I was a kid,” he says. “The first music that I heard, the first storytelling I ever heard, the first culture that ever entered my body was black culture.”

Once he settled on the idea of starting his blues chain, Tigrett wisely spread the financial risk by appealing to friends for the start-up money to fund his venture. Dan Aykroyd (who played one of the dark-suited Blues Brothers on TV and in films) chipped in, as did actor Jim Belushi (brother of the late John Belushi, Aykroyd’s fellow Blues Brother). Even Harvard University pitched in $10 million because an investment fund it runs liked Tigrett’s plan. In all, the resourceful–or at least very well-connected–Tigrett raised about $30 million in private cash, and in 1993 opened the first House of Blues in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it fit in quite nicely with all the other chain outlets, such as the Gap and the Limited, that have begun to crowd historic Harvard Square.

Since then, Tigrett has moved quickly toward making the House of Blues as aggressively ubiquitous as the Hard Rock Cafe. There are HOBs in New Orleans and Los Angeles. A new franchise will open in Chicago later this year; a location is being scouted in New York City (already teeming with theme restaurants); and venues are being planned for Tokyo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. Can Puttaparthi be far behind?

HOB–like everything else, it seems–is also going multimedia. A much lauded site opened on the Internet and on America Online last year; a record label was launched last April featuring such blues artists as Lightnin’ Hopkins and such gospel acts as Clarence Fountain & the Blind Boys of Alabama and Cissy Houston (Whitney’s mom). This summer two HOB-produced concert tours will visit 30 cities each: one, a neosoul lineup headlined by the Haitian-American hip-hop band the Fugees, starts July 22; and another featuring blues acts will hit the road July 26.

The blues have never looked so green. Revenues from the Los Angeles and New Orleans HOBs totaled more than $35 million last year. “If you watch Isaac at work, he’s a genius–he looks rock ‘n’ roll, but he thinks Madison Avenue,” says John Sykes, president of the music video network vh1 and a friend of Tigrett’s. “He is building a quality brand–you come and hear the blues, buy a burger and a T shirt on the way out. That’s pure Isaac. He’s not a quick-buck guy. He thinks long-term, and he puts together very solid franchises.”

The clubs that form the foundation for this new empire effect the rundown look and feel of a backwater juke joint, but folk art and antique guitars decorate their walls. A dozen color-TV monitors provide close-ups of the action on stage. The menu offers a melange of Southern dishes, from smothered chicken to spicy quesadillas. The performers are sometimes just as varied: such established blues acts as Bonnie Raitt and Muddy Waters, rockers like Bruce Springsteen, even reggae star Ziggy Marley. The Los Angeles club has developed such a hot reputation among mainstream musicians that the artist formerly known as Prince called to ask if he could perform.

But HOB’s y’all-come-on-down atmosphere seems downright phony to some critics–especially to the owners and devotees of older, established blues clubs that are competing with HOB franchises. “The House of Blues has taken a pretty big chunk of the blues market,” laments Bill Benoit, entertainment manager at the Tam, a blues joint in Brookline, Massachusetts, near Cambridge. “They have the name, and they have the power to book bigger acts more regularly, but there’s also sort of a prepackaged feel that goes with the club.”

Purists complain that the crowd the clubs attract–mostly young, white and male–have little appreciation for or awareness of the history of the blues. Noisy, beer-bottle-breaking audiences sometimes drown out acoustic musicians. “They’re not paying attention. They’re just out to have a good time,” says Michelle Willson, lead singer of the Boston blues band Evil Gal. “I’ve had people come up to me at the House of Blues and ask, ‘Do you think Dan Aykroyd is going to be here tonight?'”

Perhaps the sharpest criticism leveled against the clubs has been the charge that Tigrett is ripping off African-American culture. “The blues has been followed religiously by a small group of people for years who had more personal than financial gain from the music, and they stuck by it for years when it didn’t make any money,” says Mike Kappus of the Rosebud Agency, a management company that represents bluesmen John Lee Hooker and Robert Cray. “It’s a very real, emotional music. If Isaac has a true love for the music, he has to be very careful about its legacy and not intentionally or unintentionally, five years down the road, create the impression that the Blues Brothers are the best-known icon of the blues.”

Not surprisingly, Tigrett sees the situation differently. “The black community turned its back on the blues,” he says. “Black intellectuals said, ‘Blues, man, that’s some rag-tag man singing on a front porch. That’s poor self-image, singing in broken English.’ And from 1963 to 1973 the black community abandoned the blues. The audience became white, and that was a tragedy.” These are claims black and white blues lovers might question. But in an effort to show goodwill, Tigrett is trying to broaden the audience for the music he loves. HOB provides high-school seniors with college scholarships in the arts, underwrites a resident-artist program for blues musicians to present workshops to kids, and supports a training center for teachers interested in the blues.

Still, Tigrett seems to revel in being the bad boy of the blues, the Dennis Rodman of an authentic American musical form. “I came to the Blues Foundation symposium last year, and one of the lectures was titled: ‘Isaac Tigrett, House of Blues: Devil or Angel?’ ” says Tigrett with a laugh. “And I went down there, and I said, ‘I am the devil.’ I said, ‘I’m going to take this music and take it away from small-minded people who want to keep it in dirty little clubs. And I’m going to do what I do best and take it around the world.'” So get ready for Tigrett’s brand of the blues, world, whether you like it or not.

–Reported by Laura Claverie/New Orleans, Patrick Cole/Los Angeles and Tom Witkowski/Boston