Cover photo © 2025 Marilyn Stringer

For the last fifty years, there has not been a more consistently excellent blues performer than Robert Cray. As the five-time Grammy Award-winner (and 16-time nominee) turns 72 on August 1, Cray continues to thrill crowds with his signature guitar playing and fabulously soulful singing. It’s really a magic trick. I have seen Cray live several times in the last few years and he does not sound appreciably different than when I first saw him over 30 years ago. His guitar tone is impeccable, and he still hits those impossibly high notes. Never stopping might be the key. I spoke with Cray from his home in California, after his successful European tour.

“It went great, we had a good time. It was kind of a long one, we hadn’t done five weeks in a row for a while. We had a lot of good shows, well attended, it was pretty good. Summertime in Europe, a lot of outdoor shows. A mixture of blues and jazz shows, that kind of thing, clubs, theaters,” he recounted.

After a short break, the band is back on the road in August on the Out Driving Around tour, which rolls through November, crisscrossing the United States. The band has played some major festivals this year, but will mainly play theater and large club headlining gigs coming up. The time off with the family has been useful for Cray.

“Yes and it’s a better rhythm for the rest of the guys as well. We’re gettin’ up there in age, we’re not spring chickens. It’s nice to break it up. You can call your shots a little bit more these days, so it’s good.”

One of the stops on the tour will be a November 7 show in Eugene, Oregon, where he formed The Robert Cray Band in 1974.

“It’s great to go back there because I lived there for seven or eight years back when we first started the band. Things have changed and we’ve changed, but it still feels like it’s a part of my life. It will be nice to go back.”

Bassist Richard Cousins has been in The Robert Cray Band since the beginning. This pairing is one of the longest running partnerships in music. Cousins still tours with the band, suggesting set lists, and writing some of the songs.

“We’re brothers, basically that’s it,” Cray said of Cousins. “We’re a traveling family is what we are. Dover Weinberg plays keyboards with us and he was in the band in 1979 for a couple of years and he’s back with us. He rejoined the band in 2008, I believe it was. We have Steve Selig who’s our production manager, he’s been in the band 30 years! Greg Zaccaria, “Zach” our guitar tech, the same, 30 years. We’re all brothers and it’s great to have your friends alongside of you as you make your way through this world of music that we’re all doing.”

Drummer Les Falconer rounds out the crack unit. Another musician who goes back with Cray to the Pacific Northwest days is noted singer and harp player Curtis Salgado. The two combined bands to form the Cray-Hawks and Salgado sang in The Robert Cray Band for a few years, including on their first album, 1980’s Who’s Been Talkin’. Salgado left soon after to front Roomful of Blues and pursue a solo career. In 2024, they reunited for joyful version of “Gonna Forget About You” on Salgado’s 2024 record Fine By Me.

“We’d sung that song before, you’ll remember, on Who’s Been Talkin’. That time I was the front man. This time Curtis was the front man. It’s funny that we reprised that song, the old O.V. Wright song. That’s what they wanted to do. Jim Pugh produced it, who played with us for a while, it’s on Jim’s record label. Jim Pugh is a fantastic writer…great musician, all around good guy. Really cool with his Little Village records, finding all that great music and putting it out. It’s fantastic.”

Pugh played keys and co-wrote several key songs on Cray’s 1990’s albums, including the brilliant Midnight Stroll.

Growing up in Virginia and in Washington state, Cray was a fan of various guitarists, but when he saw Albert Collins at a 1969 rock festival and then at his 1971 high school graduation party in Tacoma, that really lit the fuse. He would become friends with his hero and serve as an opening act for Collins on many occasions and serve as his backing band when Collins would be on the West Coast in the mid-70’s. Cray would later team-up with Collins and Johnny Copeland on the legendary 1985 Alligator release Showdown! That set the stage for the breakthrough.

Cray hit it big with his 1986 double-platinum selling album Strong Persuader and its crossover single “Smoking Gun”, racking up sales, awards, tour dates, and TV appearances. It was a shot in the arm for his career and the blues in general. Paired with the emergence of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, George Thorogood, and others in the 80’s, Cray helped put the blues back on the radio and the pop charts. Rolling Stone ranked it #42 on its 100 Greatest Albums of the 80’s list. Cray still performs the classics “I Guess I Showed Her” and “Right Next Door (Because of Me)” from this album in his live set.

Cray became a modern-day guitar hero with many acolytes buying one of his two signature Fender Stratocaster models and studying his moves. His tour dates with Eric Clapton and appearance on the Journeyman album, specifically the song “Old Love”, added to the legend. Producer/drummer Steve Jordan recently said, “People gravitate to his guitar playing first, but I think he’s one of the best singers I’ve heard in my life.”

The Blues Hall of Famer has had a star-studded career. He has played with all the greats, from Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells to Tina Turner, the Vaughan Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, and The Rolling Stones. He appeared as the uncredited bass player in Animal House. He starred at the Crossroads Festival. He played on three John Lee Hooker albums. He even played in Keith Richards’ star-studded house band behind Chuck Berry in the 1987 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n Roll.

“That was a blast. Maybe not for Keith, which is too bad, because for Keith he’s paying homage to one of his main heroes. Chuck and I got along really well because I was the new kid on the block, so to speak. ‘Hey Robert, do you want to have a coffee?’ and we’d sit down and have coffee and Chuck was actually using me a couple times to get back at these guys. I think Chuck was playing with them quite a bit because he knew how they respected him and he was playing with them on that a lot. I remember the rehearsals were fantastic, the jam sessions were amazing with Etta James being there and singing ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and all the people that were on the gig. But then the day of the show, Chuck comes up to me and he gives me a setlist, and I was sitting next to Eric Clapton, and then Eric leans over and looks at the list and says, ‘How do you rate?!’ I had more songs than I had even rehearsed. Chuck has done that on purpose to piss them off. And he handed me the list and he walked away. Eric looked at the list and he was pissed. I knew that I wasn’t going to be playing on all those songs because I hadn’t rehearsed them and this was the day of the show. So that’s the kind of stuff he was doing to those guys… because he could. It was fun.”

Cray’s career continued to take off, spreading the blues across the globe.

“The biggest gig that we played, they told me it was 150,000 people. This was in Tallinn in Estonia and it was a festival called Rock Summer and this was in 1988 and it was before breakup of the Soviet Union or as it was just happening. We had crossed from Helsinki into Tallinn in a little boat and I have pictures of us landing at the dock and there was the flag with the hammer and sickle on it. We went into Estonia and when we’re at the festival we met people from all over Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, people from Georgia. We traded t-shirts. I have a belt buckle with the hammer and sickle on it, I traded a t-shirt for it or something like that with all these different musicians. There were flags out in the audience from all the different countries and people as far as you could see. That was the biggest fest I think we ever played.”

In 1993, Cray realized another dream playing on B.B. King’s album Blues Summit. He recently provided a jacket blurb for Daniel De Vise’s excellent biography, The King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King. King would be a major influence and they would cross paths many times over the years. They toured together in 1997 while Cray was supporting his Sweet Potato Pie album.

“B.B. was like The God, you know? The thing with B.B. was, his guitar playing is like a master class in touch, tone, story. His solos, he tells a story, it’s like the conversations that he has with people, if you’ve ever had the opportunity to speak with him. How well he tells the stories is the same way he plays guitar. It brings you in and you want to listen to him and he takes you from a beginning to a middle to the end. It’s beautiful,” Cray said.

They got to spend some time together off stage as well.

“I’d chat with him, I’d make it a point when we were touring to get the opportunity to talk with him. He was just a wonderful person, shared a lot of stories. Funny in a lot of ways too, great guy.”

“Young Bob” continued to turn out one excellent studio album after another through the 1990’s and 2000’s, including Contemporary Blues Album Grammy Award winners I Was Warned and Robert Cray & Hi Rhythm. Three live sets were also highlights: 2006’s Robert Cray Live at the BBC, 2009’s Authorized Bootleg – Live, Outdoor Concert, Austin, Texas, 5/25/87, and 2016’s 4 Nights of 40 Years Live. He has won 20 Blues Music Awards. He also received the Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance, which is appropriate because Cray’s music is truly a gumbo of multiple American styles, including blues, jazz, funk, soul, R & B, and gospel.

I’m always curious as to what great artists listens to on their own time. When I spoke to Cray last year, it was O.V. Wright, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Dixie Hummingbirds, and other gospel music. This summer’s mix was different.

“The last few records that I picked up and are sitting alongside me in the room are some Anita O’Day, there’s Jerry Butler, there’s Barry Galbraith the guitar player. That’s more recently what I’ve been listening to. Some Art Blakey.”

When asked about the state of the world and how it affects him and his music, Cray reacted like many musicians and artists have.

“It’s kind of crazy for it not to be in your psyche. On a daily basis we’re being bombarded with all this craziness, and we don’t know which way the world’s going to go, how life is going to be, if they’re going to start arresting citizens. The absurdity of putting thousands and maybe millions of people in detention or immigration camps and stuff like that. It makes playing music seem like it’s stupid. Are we going to be able to survive? You can put music aside for a moment until we get back on course. It affects us on a daily basis. It’s a mess.”

But the show must go on and one beautiful thing about the blues is that artists over age 80 like Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, and others are still welcomed by audiences, making records, and performing at a high level. They have provided a road map and inspiration to artists like Cray.

“Yeah and B.B. was doing it too until he couldn’t do it anymore. What else are you going to do? Are you just going to laze around and get bored? This is all you know and you enjoy doing it, so why stop? There’s no point. Especially after you’ve been around for a while, you can call the times as to when you go out and when you come home. You don’t have to quit doing it. So, it’s great.”

Cray’s last studio album was the well-reviewed 2020 record That’s What I Heard. He has not yet recorded a follow-up, but the conversations have begun with Steve Jordan regarding the direction of the next album.

“We’re going to at some point. Obviously, it’s different, you know? If you put out something, you’ve got to tour to sell it. The state of the record industry is not how it used to be, where the record companies would spend gazillions of dollars to make sure it sold. You’ve got to get your fat butt out on the road and sell it yourselves, which is fine because we tour. But, yes, it’s changed.”

As a closing thought, Cray also had a message for his longtime fans. “I’d like to thank everybody for all the years and even if you’re a newcomer to our music, we’d like to thank everybody for the support over all this time for us. And for us to thank you as well for letting us do what we enjoy doing for as long as we’ve been doing it.”

Blues fans eagerly await what’s next from one of the genre’s elite performers and great gentlemen.