PAINTING THE TOWN BLUE

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

"You've taken my blues and gone," the poet Langston Hughes once lamented. Well, Langston, you wouldn't believe where rock performers are trying to take your precious blues in the '90s. British guitarist Eric Clapton's prim but praiseworthy blues album From the Cradle has sold 3 million copies so far, and he's starting the second leg of his successful concert tour in August. Dan Aykroyd, who donned dark glasses to become one of the Blues Brothers on TV show Saturday Night Live and in movies, now helps run the House of Blues, a Hard Rock Cafe-style restaurant chain that features blues-inspired live music. The chain has spawned a TV series on the U.S. cable channel tbs called Live from the House of Blues, which features blues-tinged acts like the rock group Hootie & the Blowfish.

Pop stars, of course, have always drawn from the blues. Last year MCA released a terrific CD of blues songs titled Blues recorded between 1966 and 1970 by guitar genius Jimi Hendrix. Today's young, fringier musicians are remaking the blues yet again. Its attraction is not hard to understand: rock is good for rage, lust and protest, but for angst, yearning and existential misery, nothing beats the blues. One of the last songs Kurt Cobain recorded before he committed suicide was Lead Belly's Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Now several other young performers are adding a blue tint to their sound. Last month British-born art screecher PJ Harvey released a blues-shaded album, To Bring You My Love; Houston-born rocker Chris Whitley has just come out with the bluesy CD Din of Ecstasy; and this week Chris Thomas of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, releases his blues-rap album, 21st Century Blues from da Hood.

Authenticity is an essential element of the blues, and the problem with Polly Jean Harvey's CD is that there is not a single honest emotion in it. A listener feels like shouting at her, e la Tom Cruise confronting Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, "I want the truth!" Alas, Harvey can't handle the truth. She obscures her feelings (and her vocal shortcomings) with screaming and squealing. The title track has an absorbing groove, but Harvey's self-consciously raw and distorted vocals push listeners away. The throbbing, mysterious Down by the Water is another melodically intriguing tune, though Harvey's mannered vocals nearly drown it. Harvey, 25, does occasionally spin out a gratifying guitar riff; but for the most part, she's unable to style her music with subtlety or grace. Harvey would do well to listen to jazz diva Cassandra Wilson's Blue Light 'til Dawn. Wilson's bluesy, modernist, intelligent vocalizing is less theatrical but infinitely more evocative.

In contrast to Harvey, Chris Whitley on Din of Ecstasy is painfully, almost uncomfortably honest: he comes at the listener like a drunk friend at an office party, trapping you in the corner and telling you how terrific your wife is in bed. In Narcotic Prayer, the CD's best track-and one of the better rock songs released this year-Whitley wheezes, "As the party closes-I ain't got a clue/ Red and yellow roses-nipple rings and tattoos." Whitley, 34, builds his songs on blues ideas and catalyzes them with muted electric guitars. He never makes his rock-blues fusion seem like a mere experiment or a lark; when he plays his fuzzy, rambling riffs, they seem natural and flowing. His trouble is a tendency for his songs to collapse into a sonic murk. But a few, such as New Machine, maintain a sense of musical momentum and connect emotionally.

Thomas' 21st Century Blues from da Hood, with its unusual but mostly successful attempt to combine blues and rap, is the most ambitious of the three new CDs. His songs boast a crunching blues beat, brash guitars and howling harmonica solos. Thomas, 29, tries to bring the blues into the present. As he sings on the title track, "Whoever says the blues was dead/ Needs to come where I'm from where the streets are red." It's a gutsy album that works best when Thomas stops rapping and lets his music do the talking.

In the end, however, the best blues is still decades old. Last year Columbia re-released King of the Delta Blues Singers, a superb collection of songs by blues trailblazer Robert Johnson. The original recordings of these performances in the 1930s were crudely done, and for this release, some of the sonic flaws have been smoothed over. Johnson died in 1938, but his songs-such as 32-20 Blues and Come on in My Kitchen-still radiate a devilish charm and plucky inventiveness. Newcomers may have taken the blues, but Johnson reminds us that they haven't gone very far.