Robert Cray was just a high school kid with a passion for music. Albert Collins was his hero. A chance meeting between the two in 1971 helped launch Cray through the blues stratosphere and into legendary status, and it happened thanks to Cray’s classmates. His high school class had a choice for its graduation party: It could invite Collins or a popular rock band of the era. The class chose Collins.
“I kind of idolized Albert Collins,” said Cray. “After he played our high school graduation party, I went up to him and introduced myself. He asked me, ‘Are you that young man who plays guitar?’”
When Cray answered in the affirmative, Collins said, “Well, keep it up.” It was important early affirmation, and Cray has been going strong ever since.
In fact, Cray is bringing his All Amped Up Tour to Oklahoma City at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 27. The show at Tower Theater will be his first OKC visit since performing with Eric Clapton at what is now the Paycom Center on March 5, 2007.
There’s a chance Cray could play music from his soon-to-be-released album that he says focuses on current events with “some good ole’ blues and R&B.” While the album has been cut, but a release date hasn’t been set, although Cray expects it will be released early next year.
How It Started
Coincidentally, that encounter between Collins and Cray at the graduation party wasn’t their last meeting. In the mid-1970s, the newly formed Robert Cray Band served as Collins’ backup band as they toured the Pacific Northwest and West Coast for more than a year.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Collins “… had been playing a lot of music festivals, and these festivals featured a variety of music—rock, R&B, blues,” Cray said.
Members of the rock band Canned Heat championed Collins’ music and helped him get booked on the San Francisco psychedelic rock circuit alongside acts like the Grateful Dead.
“What I noticed was that anyone who came before him or after him got beat up (musically),” Cray said. “I’m watching this and going crazy. We ended up opening up for him in the early days, and he was a father figure to me. We’d open up and then he’d come on stage and we’d stand behind him. It was in the days of platform shoes, and you’d stand there and your feet would start to get sore. He’d take that long cord and walk into the crowd, and we’d look around and wonder, ‘Where’s Albert?’”
Branching Out
After backing up Collins, Cray launched his own successful recording career, releasing his debut solo album Who’s Been Talkin’ in 1980. He followed that with acclaimed records Bad Influence (1983) and False Accusations (1985). That’s the same year he reunited with Collins, this time as peers, to record the Grammy-winning collaborative blues album Showdown!
Cray achieved mainstream crossover success with Strong Persuader (1986), which featured the hit single “Smoking Gun” and sold more than two million copies. The single reached number two on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart and number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, but the expansion of the blues was not something Cray foresaw, nor did his contemporaries.
“It became more than what we expected,” Cray said. “We played music because we loved it, and just being able to do that and make a living meant success to us. For bands like ours, our music includes a core of R&B and blues and a touch of rock.” The mixture of genres helped, and according to Cray, so did MTV. “MTV opened up a lot,” he said. “Smoking Gun” earned Cray a nomination for the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in a Video in 1987.
Where It’s Going
Now 73, Cray has released 20 studio albums, with the 21st on the way, and he has surpassed five million copies in total career sales. He’s been a member of the Blues Hall of Fame since 2011, and received the Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
And don’t think he’s ready to stop singing the blues. As for who his successor will be or who might move the genre forward after him, there are many good prospects, and “They’re all doing their own thing,” Cray said.
“You listen to Derek Trucks or Kingfish [Christone Ingram]—they’re inspired by the blues, but they’re also inspired by what they’re listening to now,” Cray said. “It’s like when I started. You couldn’t have done it without Howlin’ Wolf, but you also couldn’t deny the greatness of an Otis Redding either.”
Or an Albert Collins, for that matter. It was his handshake and kind words that inspired Cray, who inspired the second generation of blues legends and lifted the genre to a new apex.
This article appears in Thunder Season Preview.