POP MUSIC REVIEW : Santa Ana’s Got the Blues : Local Group Junior Watson/Lynwood Slim Band Turn in Some Heated Sets at Highly Deco Randell’s

SANTA ANA — The blues came up the Mississippi from the Delta, took a left turn at Chicago, tripped on the Rockies, and evidently landed in a dark glass office building in Santa Ana.

Since it began in fields and road houses early in this century, blues music has found some curious abodes, from pristine Swiss festival sites to neon Japanese nightclubs. But of all the precarious footholds it has found in Orange County over the last several years, the most curious must be Randell’s, a highly Deco restaurant in the ground floor of the Three Hutton Centre office building.

From its white Italian marble floor to its black acoustical tiled ceiling, there is little about the the locale to suggest you’ll ever find patrons doing the funky chicken there. But, while the place may have a built-in decorum and reserve, the Junior Watson/Lynwood Slim Band turned in some heated sets there Saturday night.

The year-old, Orange County-based quartet takes a decidedly stylish approach to the blues, with singer Slim (Richard Duran) preferring the West Coast Charles Brown cool school of singing to its rougher Eastern counterparts. His harp playing is similarly styled.

In Watson’s decades of playing with Jimmy Rogers, Big Mama Thornton, Charlie Musselwhite, the Mighty Flyers and Canned Heat, he’s developed one of the most distinctive and rich guitar sounds around. While he can worry a string with the best of them, he also specializes in complex jazz runs and chord solos, always infected with a warmth and a sly humor.

While both he and Slim can cut loose with musical knife-fights (Slim holds a road degree in the roof-shaking Chicago style of harmonica playing), they also know how to keep the sparks flying while playing with restraint, as they clearly felt was required by their surroundings Saturday. The two were backed ably by veteran SoCal drummer Richard Innes and pianist Tom Mahon, who also filled in the bass role on a Fender-Rhodes piano bass.

The sets ranged over obscure classics and nondescript originals, most enlivened more by what the musicians brought to the songs than by the tunes’ inherent qualities. Selections included Little Walter’s “Too Late,” New Orleans singer Billy Tate’s “Special Lesson Number One,” and Charles Brown’s “I Cried Last Night.”

Slim further applied Brown’s mellow style to Little Walter’s “I’m Just Your Fool,” a tune that showcased his harp abilities. Watson, meanwhile worked in lush chordal shadings and tossed a quote from “Willow Weep for Me” into his solo.

Watson did much of his playing on a ‘50s Kay arch top guitar, an instrument noted for its Louisville Slugger-like neck. While virtually unplayable in most hands, the guitars have the fat tone Watson likes, and his nimble soloing seemed unaffected by its deficiencies. His and Slim’s standout number was the original instrumental “The Woodpecker,” which was full of comic invention.

Watson’s playing strenuously avoids the obvious, and takes some mighty strange paths doing so. During “The Woodpecker” he several times played lines that sounded like major flubs, until he’d follow them with something that would reveal a wild logic.

While one of the best outfits on the local blues scene, the band hasn’t especially lived up to its potential in its year together. Most of the tunes composed by the pair so far are strongly derivative and based around simple blues forms. What these two need are songs that step more out of the 12-bar norm and take advantage their varied influences and unique talents. The group will likely return to Randell’s in late November.

The club’s owner, Randell Young, is himself a blues and R&B; guitarist and a lot of attention clearly has been paid to the music presentation here.

Both the sound and the sight lines in the club are splendid. There are plenty of hard surfaces--notably the glass walls facing the artificial lake outside--but the room has been engineered to dampen the brittle echo that might otherwise result. Instead, it has a lively ambient sound that carries the full range of the music clearly without obliterating conversation.

The sectioned stage is fronted by stylishly back-lit glass bricks. The drum riser is off to the side, placing the drums a little farther from the patrons than the other instruments, helping to balance the sound naturally. The setup may be a tad disconcerting for groups used to working in close proximity, however.

Randell’s features live music nightly, ranging from contemporary jazz to Young’s own blues band on Friday nights. Admission is always free. The format seems to be working as the restaurateur claims to be running in the black after only three months of operation.