10/21/2000 - A Cyber fan from Toronto, Canada writes ...
You guys truly are mothafunkinfinefunkmasters ofdauniverse...just bought your CD, will make sure all my friends buy it too. keep the music alive.....

09/26/2000 - Gordon from Michigan State University writes.....
I've seen you guys play a couple times down at Famous Dave's in the city! Love your stuff!

Memoirs of The 1999 Chicago Blues Festival - by Tim Holek
........ However, the band we came to see was Big James & The Chicago Playboys . I saw Big James and his trombone drenched blues at the 1996 fest and have been waiting to see him again. He now has a CD out which is superb and has received great reveiws in numerous publications. They have the freshest sound in the blues today! Refer to the About BIg James article I downloaded. They played a set of blues standards plus many originals from their debut CD such as: "I Wanna Be Your Man and "Da Blues Will Never Die." Big James is a former member of the Little Milton and Albert King bands but it was the late Johnny Christian who had the biggest influence on him.......

N'DIGO - December 15, 1999 - Review by Mark Ruffin
N'Music - Big James and The Chicago Playboys
It was my newfound love of the chicken wings at Famous Dave's that led me into a time warp, pondering the state of blues music in Chicago at the turn of the century.

The latest downtown eatery to double as a shrine to the blues ia a magnificent two-tiered room that falls somewhere in the middle in erms of delivering authentic atmosphere when compared to competitors to the south - the surreal House of Blues and the real down-home Buddy Guy's Legends.

It started while staring out the window of the neon-splattered Clark Street nightclub. I was distracted by a beautiful frame that held the album cover to Years Go Buy, by the late Albert King. I sat staring into the memory of a day long ago in Grant Park, just weeks before the famous Sly & The Family Stone Grant Park riots of the early 70'ss, where I saw Albert King on a bill with Booker T. & The MGs. Afterwards, he was always my favorite blues artist.

Years go by, indeed, and as they have, the interaction of black people and blues music has changed. Those were my thoughts when another Albert King song should've popped in my head, for unbeknownst to me, climbing on stage on the opposite side of the room was an angel of mercy, in the form of Big James and his group, The Chicago Playboys.

Of the sextet, four of the musicians looked to be in their 30's, including the leader, who sings and plays trombone. For the first time in my life, I was looking at a group of Black men of a younger generation playing the blues. I thought maybe there was some hope for what was essentially a Black music to remain Black in the 21st century.

After opening with an instrumental, the young guitar player sung a killer contemporary version of Little Milton's Feel So Bad, with the horn section punctuating licks straight out of the old Memphis Stax house of soul. The sax player then went into his emotional Tyrone Davis piece when I realized I had to go. But I stayed to hear the leader finally step up to the stage and evoke a funky, soul-drenched song titled My Last Two Dollars.

Big James didn't get his name from missing too many meals, and his girth has aided in giving him the natural power of a classic blues shouter and a master jazz horn player. He dazzled the mostly White audience with his polish, timing and showmanship. As I finally left the place singing My Last Two Dollars, I began to wonder, how do young Black musicians handle the blues when they're bit by them.

Later that night, still humming that chorus while surfing the Internet, I searched for Big James & The Chicago Playboys. I found that - at least in Big James' case - young Black musicians become cyber-bluesmen when they want to succeed in an ancient form that most of their own people seemed to have abandoned.

"Black people don't seem to have an appreciation for the blues anymore, unfortunately," James Montgomery said, after I tracked him down through bigjames.com. "I don't feel good about that, but I'm playing for somebody. I'm not playng to empty houses, but I wish my own people were there."

Montgomery got the blues while a teenager at Whitney Young High School and through the All City Music Program. Carrying his horn through his southside neighborhood one day, members of Billy Branch's Son of Blues band sequestered him in a local club, and by 19, he was playing with Little Milton.

"I was hooked after that," said Montgomery, who looks even younger than his 37 years. "Some people get turned on by drugs, I got turned out on the blues. After I left Little Milton, I played with Albert King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and almost everybody on the blues circuit."

From his website, I found out that Montgomery's band was playing two days later at Buddy Guy's Legends and have an admirable schedule of dates scattered through four states.

At Legends, the band was even more astounding, finishing a rousing set - again in front of a mostly White crowd - with an amazing medley of George Clinton songs done in a slow blues that began with Parliament-Funkadelic's Cosmic Slop, and finished 10 minutes later chanting, Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On.

Afterwards I rushed to get a copy of the group's CD Funkin' Blues, and to tell Montgomery that I thought it would be smart to record the P-Funk stuff. The Cyber-bluesman said, "Check out Track 10."

E-Mail Mark Ruffin at mruffin@jazzusa.com

09/21/1999 - Dave a Lead Guitar Player write...
I caught your show in my hometown (Twin Lakes). You guys were "Excellent". Good "feel" in the tunes. I'm enjoying your CD, which I bought from you that night, also. Your bass player is a MONSTER! Lemme know if he ever leaves your band, so I can talk him into joining mine! Keep up the good work.

08/28/1999 - Gary from Greenville, NC writes...
I just wanted to let James know how much I enjoyed his ans his band's performance Sunday 2 weeks ago...I purchased the CD and have been listening to it constantly since I came back home.......