James’ long road to the Grammys

10:43am Friday 16th February 2007

There is something very self-effacing about James Hunter.

Ask about his life before a certain album showed just how good a blues musician he is, and he will cheerfully talk about his week in furniture sales and rather longer as a trainee signalman with the then British Rail.

Push forward more than 20 years to that Grammy nomination for the best traditional blues album of 2006, and you can almost hear him shrug. But it isn't false modesty. Hunter has been around too long - he's now 44 - to be affected by accolades from the American R&B scene. If ever a man were grounded, it's Hunter.

Still, it seems an awful long way from Colchester's Monkwick Secondary School - now Thomas, Lord Audley - to Van Morrison insisting his is currently "one of the best voices...in British R&B and soul".

So good, he was nominated alongside blues legends Duke Robillard, Dion and Ike Turner for the Grammy. That he was in such company, he finds amazing. Second to Ike Turner? Delicious.

When we spoke he hadn't been back in this country all that long, probably no more than 12 hours. Yet he was polite, funny, as down-to-earth as you could imagine, and there wasn't a hint of jet-lag.

He had flown from Los Angeles almost underwhelmed by the experience (the Grammy awards ceremony was held "somewhere in Hollywood"), but enthusing about the time he had spent with Dion. Along with Otis Rush - a Mississippi blues musician - and the incomparable Muddy Waters, Dion has influenced Hunter considerably.

Today, he writes his own songs, is lead vocals and plays the guitar. He fronts a six-man blues band called, appropriately, James Hunter, and that certain album - People Gonna Talk - is selling in its tens of thousands.

"We've never had this attention before, and this is our (James Hunter band) third album together," he mused. You could almost hear him thinking, well, maybe the album is good after all. It is - and he should get the plaudits. He wrote all 14 tracks, including one back in 1995, I'll Walk Away.

"Music lessons? No - I'm completely self-taught," he said. " I showed no talent at school except I was an aspiring triangle player, but it came to nothing. I never thought about being a musician. I fancied myself acting - and ducking out of O-levels. Neither happened."

Yet by his own admission, he was "really into" music, especially R&B, soul and early rock and roll. But as a career? Not then.

"I left school in 1979, when I was 16, and got a job at a furniture store at Severalls (industrial estate)," he said. "I lasted a week - I think they thought I was overqualified with my one O-level.

"Then I went to work for British Rail, eventually as a signals maintenance assistant. I suppose this is when I came to look at music as some sort of alternative to the railways. I certainly didn't want to work for British Rail for the rest of my life.

"But I didn't have too much of an epiphany. It all happened very slowly."

Hunter was now in a trio. He was teaching himself the guitar and attempting song-writing. He sent a demo to a record label in London who passed it to more "accomplished" musicians.

"They got in touch with me, and we ended up busking in London at weekends," he explained.

By 1986 he was fronting Howlin' Wilf (a tribute to Howlin' Wolf, another Mississippi blues singer) and the Vee-Jays, had appeared on Channel Four's The Tube and was touring the UK and Europe. He had also parted company with British Rail.

Eventually, Howlin' Wilf and the Vee-jays turned into James Hunter, he moved to Camden and, in 2003, was given the opportunity to cut People Gonna Talk at the Toe Rag studios thanks to American record producers Steve Erdman and his wife, Kimberley Guise.

"That's when the problems started. There was a lot of resistance to putting the album out on a big record label - mainly because I was 40 and the content wasn't mainstream enough," he said.

Much later, it went out on Rounder Records. Then came the nomination.

"I was really suited up for the Grammys. I always wear a suit for gigs, but not like this. I had a black shirt, white tie and a black pinstripe suit - I looked like a gangster. Or maybe a penguin."

His wife of five weeks, Jacqueline, didn't go with him.

"We've been together about 18 months," he said. "Our eyes met across a crowded room in the 100 Club in Oxford Street during a gig. She bought me a drink - that's what made me think I had better stay with this one because no one else buys me drinks!"

Definitely grounded.