The Neighborhood Kid
Jose Ramos
Age: 44
Where: Monday nights at Wally’s Cafe, 427 Mass. Ave., Boston; 617-424-1208.
The Good Life, 28 Kingston St, Boston; 617-451- 2622 / 720 Mass Ave,
Cambridge – 617 868 8800) alternate Thursdays / Bob the Chef’s.
Occasionally at The Cantab Lounge..
Years performing in Boston: 29 (yes, he started at 15)
Biggest gig: Steppin’ Out 2000′ event for the Dimock Community Health Center at the World Trade Center, Boston.
Favorite song: Too tough to call
Top request: Freddy Fender’s “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” and Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive and Wail”
A few blocks past Symphony Hall sits another Boston musical landmark, the watering hole-in-the-wall known as Wally’s Cafe.
Wally’s attracts some of the hottest regional and national talents, but for the last eight years, Monday nights have belonged to local bluesman Jose Ramos.
“Growin’ up in the South End, I worked as a shoeshine boy,” Ramos recalls. “That’s how I met Wally. I used to shine in front of his club. One time, I got wax on a `street entrepreneur’s’ silk socks. The guy got pissed and started yelling, and Wally stuck his head out and basically saved me. So that’s how we got together.”
Little space is wasted in this living room-sized bar. Amplifiers rest on the pay phone and T-shirts hang from the ceiling. Plaques and old-time pictures adorn the brick walls, and the mechanical cash register behind the long wood bar sounds the same chime it did when Wally himself punched its sticky keys.
“We started as a poppish R&B thing,” Ramos says of his band Special Blend. “When I went to Italy a few years ago, we saw how badly the blues could be done, and we decided to add a couple of blues tunes to the show to show ’em how it was done.”
After opening for such acts as Koko Taylor and Taj Mahal at various Italian festivals, Ramos and Special Blend returned to Boston, where they began to hang out at neighborhood clubs like The Cantab.
“I got to see a lot of good blues there,” Ramos says, rhythmically tapping his fingers on his broad T-shirt, “most of which I learned from just hanging out.” Ramos also cites Tito Puente, Miles Davis, and Ella Fitzgerald among his influences.
“I also get a lot from the folks in the neighborhood,” he says. “There’s too much going on in the South End for me to do just one thing.”
In its covers of legends like King Floyd, B.B. King, and Sonny Boy Williamson, Special Blend serves up a tasty mixture of blues, jazz, R&B, soul, and rock that gets everybody’s mojo workin’.
There’s hardly enough room to dance, but attempts are welcome. The stage gets pretty crowded as well, so Ramos often steps aside to let band members solo. He’ll join the crowd, chatting, joking, and sharing their enjoyment of his bandmates.
Among Ramos’s faithful are two women whom he has nicknamed Strawberry and Chocolate. “I never come on other nights,” Strawberry says. “This is the night to be here.”
“Jose is really good about giving other people a chance to perform,” Chocolate adds, recalling nights when students jammed with Weepin’ Willie. “He’s just awesome!”
In addition to attracting musical standouts like Buddy Miles, Gordon Beadle, and Brian McKnight, Ramos has also jammed with the less musically inclined, including baseball’s Mo Vaughn, NBA player/actor Rick Fox, and comedian Damon Wayans.
“There’s value to playing Wally’s,” Ramos observes. “Some gigs are just gigs. Playing Wally’s has real feeling. It’s a little dinky place, but it’s so huge in history, that I feel fortunate to be here. . . . It gives me something to hold onto and something to leave behind.”
