Blues triple play rocks Music Hall

There was a huge blues hit last year by Mel Waiters called "The Smaller the Club the Bigger the Party."

That's a truism on the party scene. And it was proven Saturday at the Charleston Music Hall, not a club but a small hall that seemed to get tiny over the course of the three-hour blues party there.

Dan Wright & the New Beat, Zac Harmon featuring Billy Gibson and Shemekia Copeland peeled the paint off the walls with a rollicking, good-time show that just wowed the 600 people in attendance.

Copeland, daughter of the late Chicago blues master Johnny Copeland, belted out slow and fast songs full of standard blues themes, such as unrequited love, bad luck and troubled relationships.

Her alto voice was strong and true and overflowing with meaning. The audience wrapped its arms around her warmth and sincerity, especially near the end of the show, when she left the microphone on stage and walked out into the house while rendering a soulful version of one of her dad's songs, "Ghetto Child."

The entire show was exceptional.

Dan Wright & the New Beat offered up straight-ahead blues, complete with Wright's virtuosic guitar work and some killer drumming by Quentin Ravenel.

Zac Harmon and his band almost stole the show. Harpist Billy Gibson helped him bring a Memphis sound that had all the elements of that feel, including the raw funk of Rufus Thomas and the jazzy nuance of BB King.

Harmon got to the essence of the blues Saturday night, though, with an awesome treatment of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man." He wailed away with blood curdling shouts and lightning-and-thunder guitar licks while Gibson soared on his harmonica to ever higher heights and mined ever deeper depths.

As it turns out, the show was aptly titled. It was billed as the Charleston Blues Festival. It was indeed a festival with all the forms of this seminal American music showing up somewhere at sometime Saturday.

It was a blast.