In spirituals and the Delta blues, black musicians often looked to the Jewish Bible for inspiration. Jewish bluesman Saul Kaye is going to return the favor next week.
Kaye, a Bay Area-based guitarist and bandleader, will borrow heavily from U.S. black culture when he cuts “Jewish Blues Vol. 1,” a new album he will record live in a Thursday, July 31 concert at Berkeley’s La Peña Cultural Center.
Fans won’t have to wait long to buy the music. Kaye will press and sell CDs immediately after the show. “I’m taking a huge risk by offering the recording right there the night of the show,” he says with a laugh.
He’s counting on the quality of the music to pull him through. Kaye wrote a spate of new songs for the recording, all drawn from Torah stories. Titles include “Moses Blues,” “Jeremiah’s Blues,” “Job” and “Sea of Reeds.” He also throws in the old Negro spirituals “Wade in the Water” and “Go Down Moses” to bring things full circle.
“We have this incredible blues music that came out of the African slave tradition,” he notes. “There were hundreds of years of Jewish slavery, yet no music that comes straight out of that other than a couple of prayers and songs. I thought it would be cool to dip the Jewish slave experience in the African American slave musical tradition.”
Kaye’s interest in music began in early childhood, then became serious when he started guitar lessons as a teen in the ’80s. In addition to absorbing the pop music of the day, he also responded to the music he heard in synagogue, especially numbers composed in the melodic minor scale (sometimes called the “Jewish scale”).
After his bar mitzvah, he fell away from Judaism, delving deeper into jazz, rock, reggae, folk and, most importantly, the blues. He soon came under the spell of “Blues Train,” a syndicated radio show. “I got a cassette tape of blues classics,” Kaye recalls. “Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ray Charles and Percy Mayfield. I wore that tape out.”
In addition to those and other blues pioneers such as Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon, he also enjoys the music of contemporary artists such as Keb’ Mo’, Eric Bibb and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Judaism came back into Kaye’s life in his mid 20s, and in a perfectly spectacular way: while praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
“It was the cliché Wall moment,” Kaye recalls. “I’d grown up with my parents’ version of Judaism, and had never felt anything like that day at the Wall. Afterward, I felt this was an undeniable part of what I am.”
He returned to the Bay Area to start up his four-piece Saul Kaye Band, which plays a mix of blues, rock, pop and folk. Over the years, he recorded several CDs and has toured all over the world. These days he’s on the road almost full time.
Kaye found a spiritual home at Berkeley’s Chochmat HaLev, a congregation known for its rockin’ Shabbat services and sensational house band. He played with that band off and on for years, at both Shabbat and High Holy Day services.
Kaye says the inspiration for the Chochmat HaLev band, led by musical director Brian Schachter-Brooks, is Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. “They have a 70-piece choir with an incredible funk band. It’s so over the top. Brian said, ‘We need this in Judaism.'”
Kaye isn’t sure how general audiences will react to his Jewish blues music. However, he’s feeling confident his fellow Jews will take the bait.
“When I say ‘Jewish blues,’ most Jews laugh,” he says, “then they get interested. I was playing the Fillmore poster room, and during the Jeremiah song, someone in the crowd had a strong reaction. Turned out he was a teacher at the Jewish Community High School [in San Francisco]. He was teaching Jeremiah that week, and he said to me later, ‘You have to play this for the class.'”
And, of course, Kaye did.
The Saul Kaye Band plays 8 p.m. Thursday, July 31, at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. Tickets: $10. Information: (510) 849-2568 or www.lapena.org.