I. The Los Angeles district of San Pedro, California, is a place you have to want to visit. It is not on the way to anywhere. The community is literally, if not figuratively, at the end of the road. San Pedro clings to the side of the hill and to the past. It rests on the south side of the otherwise very posh Palos Verdes Peninsula. The small working class enclave is a place that the often ridiculously trendy Los Angeles seemed to forget a long time ago. San Pedro hasn’t yet surrendered its identity to mega malls and large “box” stores. This community doesn’t have a fancy façade masking the ugly banality of a pervasive pop culture that has sold its collective soul to the devil a long time ago. San Pedro’s gritty exterior reminds me of what blues music sounded and felt like a very long time ago. It may not be pretty on the outside and actually appear to be downright dangerous, but if you have an adventurous spirit your rewards will make any initial apprehension disappear. I have always found a great deal of charm and beauty in the community of San Pedro as well as the type of blues music I heard being made their on a warm hazy afternoon this past April. It seems very appropriate that, in a small recording studio tucked into a modest residential neighborhood in this industrial harbor community, late 40’s and early 50’s electric, Chicago blues is being played by two kindred spirits. San Pedro’s own Mark Mumea, the guitarist/vocalist best known as a member of the international blues band The Elgins and vocalist/harmonica player Karl Cabbage of the San Diego based band, Red Lotus Revue were making early post war electric Chicago blues. They are two young men who our readers have gotten to know through features that we ran on both musicians last year. They have come together to form a band called, The Silver Kings. In this day and age we are constantly surrounded by more of everything. The world is moving at a faster pace. It seems as if we have to shout to be heard above the din. The blues as an art form is not immune to this modernization. Over the past several decades, the blues has evolved into many things. It has been stretched so far that it is barely recognizable. Today when listening to what is being passed off as blues, we are likely to experience high volume, high intensity and a rock influenced alternative to the real thing. The music has more of everything, except blues. The Silver Kings have taken a courageous and fresh approach and move the music back to a time when popular commercial tastes were not the aspiration of the blues musician. The Silver Kings approach the music from a similar perspective that was the hallmark of the pioneers of early electric post war blues. This band revisits the exciting period of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when modern recording technology, electricity and blues collided to create music that was very special. This was a period when pure artistic expression ruled the day. It was a time before the commercial youth market came to dominate the record business and hold sway over the musicians themselves. The music that had migrated from the South to the North added a new urban, amplified sound. This brand of blues music that featured restraint, dynamic phrasing, subtlety, nuance and depth is a sound that is rarely heard today. Similar to the way the music was being performed and recorded in its peak, The Silver Kings attempt to capture the essence of that original electric sound. They have found that elusive raw excitement that lies at the heart of this music. With the use of authentic, vintage equipment from this period, they take an understated, minimalistic approach that opens the music up. This style allows for a wider range of human emotion and expression. This gives listeners the opportunity to come to the music instead of forcing the music onto them. Their passion for the original form of the music clearly shines through in every note they play. It could be said that The Silver Kings are the living embodiment of the adage that ‘something old can indeed be something new.’ I say, ‘The Silver Kings are like the music they play and that is something that is truly timeless.’ I sat down with Mark Mumea and Karl Cabbage as they took a break from recording to talk to me about their thoughts on this music and this new band which they hope can breathe new life into an all but forgotten art form. (Click on the biography source link below to read the copy of the interview.) Source: Blues Junction Production - The Silver Kings II. Silver Kings are a four-piece band from Chorley, Lancashire.