Curtis Salgado has a big soulful voice that embodies the blues.
He also has a seemingly fathomless love and appreciation for the music traditions and history.
That comes through on his most recent album “Clean Getaway” with his husky, rich voice caresses various
soulful tales of love and its discontents. It comes out as well during a conversation with the bluesman
as he drives across Texas from Austin to Tyler, in and out of cell phone coverage, weaving his own tale
of a love affair with the blues.
Salgado continues on the main stage at the Black Swamp Arts Festival.
Salgado grew up in Eugene, Ore., where the lumbering and higher education meet, in the 1970s. The kind of
town with lots of clubs at a time when musical discovery was in fashion.
His mom played piano and his dad aspired to be an opera singer;. Their record collection were stuffed
with the gems of American jazz and blues… Meade Lux Lewis, Fats Waller, and most of all Count Basie.
Salgado had an older brother ad sister who as time wet on introduced him to edgier and newer sounds —
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie at Massey Hall, Bob Dylan and blues masters like Muddy Waters.
“That’s how it all started,” he said. “I listened to everything contemporary. I still have my feet firmly
planted in the blues and gospel. I find more joy in that than any of the contemporary rap and hip hop
stuff, though I like some of that.”
And Salgado is still on the road. A liver transplant and a bout with cancer hasn’t stopped him. He said
though he slowed down some during treatments, he never stopped performing completely.
Now cancer free he back traveling the byways of the country. “It changes your goals and ideas about
success,” Salgado said.
Musicians, he said, seeks validation. Winning Grammys, selling out stadiums, selling millions of
records..
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m just happy to be in a van rolling down the street. Sometimes I’m playing
for 15 people, sometimes 15,000.”
No matter how many people are there, “we’re going up there and put on our show and hope to God they like
it.”
Audience approval is what got Salgado hooked on performing at an early age. He came home from
kindergarten one day with a note pinned to his jacket. His mother told him the teacher thought he had a
nice voice and wanted him to sing in a concert.
Salgado said he remembered being on stage with two other boys singing “Jesus Loves Me,” “Roll the Stone
Away” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
One of the other boys froze, so as Salgado sang out, he was also nudging the other boy trying to get him
to sing.
“The audience thought it was adorable,” the singer said. “I was hooked.”
He sang all through school, as well as doing dramatics. In his early teens, he also discovered drugs and
alcohol. “I was a knucklehead in high school,” he said, but it was music and theater that helped him get
his grades up.
When it came time to go to college, he took the small amount of money his parents had for him to go to
college and, with their blessing, decided to pursue a music career.
Eugene “had a huge hippie scene and a huge music scene.”
Salgado, who picked up harmonica, started playing regularly hooking up with first with bassist Richard
Cousins and then through him the young bluesman Robert Cray.
Not only did they perform, but they booked bluesmen from California, especially Oakland, into local
clubs, so they could perform with them.
The lessons he learned from the likes of Sonny Rhodes, Luther Tucker, Buddy Ace and Floyd Dixon still
influence the way he sings today.
“Most cats who sing the blues rush through the stuff,” he said. “I learned how to worry the note, how to
phrase and time it.”
Salgado played a role in passing his love of the music onto millions of new listeners when John Belushi
came to town to film “Animal House.”
Belushi had scant knowledge of the blues through his “Saturday Night Live” cohort Dan Aykroyd, who was a
harmonica player. The comedian started coming out to hear the Nighthawks with Salgado on vocals.
Salgado remembers the night they met. Since the singer worked weekends, he’d never seen “Saturday Night
Live” and didn’t know who Belushi was. Salgado was more interested in flirting with female fans. But
then Belushi mentioned that Ray Charles was going to be on the show. That got the singer’s interest. “Do
you know he plays alto saxophone?”
A friendship evolved. Salgado brought piles of records over to the home where Belushi and his wife were
staying. Displacing the Blue Oyster Cult LPs that the comedian had been listening on. Belushi wanted to
sit in, so Salgado encouraged him to learn the Floyd Dixon tune “Hey Bartender.”
After Belushi first performed it as an antic Joe Crocker impression, Salgado urged him to just be
himself.
“Hey, Bartender” and other tunes entered the repertoire of what became the Blues Brothers. And Ray
Charles played alto saxophone for he first time in years wen he appeared in “Saturday Night Live.”
Years later, Dixon encountered Salgado at a festival and thanked him for introducing his song to Belushi.

At that point he’d earned $78,000 in royalties from the Blues Brothers recording.
Salgado asked how he spent it. “I spent it all on the horses,” Dixon said.
Salgado laughs at the memory: “That is the blues, man.”