The sign at Boca's Back Room. (Veda Jo Jenkins / sflimages.com)

More: Directions, nearby dining

The Back Room, which has been a mainstay of South Florida blues in several different locations, is closing its doors in Boca Raton this weekend. But they’re going out with a bang.

On Thursday, the club will have an official closing-night party with several major-league local blues acts, including J.P. Soars & The Red Hots, Junior Drinkwater and the Westside Blues Band and special guests.

On Friday, Guitar Shorty will be bringing the blues back to Boca along with some blistering guitar work. Then on Saturday, David Shelley & Bluestone will close out the bar’s run.

The Back Room has been the home of the blues in south Palm Beach County in one location or another since 1992. They shifted between three different spots in Delray Beach until 2001, then took a few years off before re-opening at 7200 N. Federal Highway in Boca Raton.

The good news for the Back Room is that owner John Yurt seems hopeful that it’s not the end for this place, asking fans of the club to sign up on an email list: “I will let you know if, where and when we will re-open.”

(Veda Jo Jenkins of sflimages.com contributed to this article.)

South Florida blues rockers Iko Iko recently played a Fort Pierce Jazz & Blues Society event and provided some good music for a weekend afternoon:

For more information about Iko Iko, click here, while more about the Fort Pierce Jazz & Blues Society can be found here.

Tinsley Ellis performs at the Back Room in Boca Raton. (Veda Jo Jenkins / sflimages.com)

Photos: Tinsley Ellis at the Back Room | Visit this photographer’s website | More: For bluesman Ellis, nothing beats the road

Dixie Highway is dark along this stretch in Boca Raton. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything except freight cars on the train tracks. There is a bright light up ahead: it reads The Back Room. Looking more like a last pit stop on a lonely highway, the Back Room is deceiving. Inside playing his soul out on the guitar is legendary blues artist Tinsley Ellis.

When you enter you feel like you’ve stepped back in time, perhaps transported to an old brothel in New Orleans. The walls are painted red; the couches are red too and on the walls are plastered with multitudes of framed art of women. What is this place?

Once Ellis cranked up the guitar the sound enveloped me. His magnetism just draws you in and I became mesmerized, lost in time. Ellis plays with a three-piece band and I turned my attention to the drummer, Jeff Burch, who alone is a show to watch. Lost in his own world Burch compliments Ellis note for note. I ping-pong back in forth between the two, feeling the passion they poured into their instruments.

For the bass player known as The Evil 1, the quiet one on stage, it’s all about the audience: “If you’re getting off on it that’s what matters.” Evil 1 played with Ellis from 1990-1995 and came back to join him again in 2003. Asked how he feels about playing night after night, “There is no drug in the world that compares to it”, a feeling other artists can truly understand. “There is nothing like it when you are in the zone.”

Ellis definitely has a loyal fan base. Lindy Cerar from Boynton Beach has seen him 20 times. A woman calling herself “Blues 4 Tania” has seen him close to 60 times! One summer she followed him around on tour in her car. “The best part of being a fan overtime is seeing the songs evolve,” she said.

From southern blues to Memphis rock, or is it Memphis blues to southern rock, Ellis has evolved putting both together on his new album Speak No Evil.

As for the Back Room, this is a diamond in the rough. Small and intimate, patrons get to mingle with the performers between sets. There is an outside patio to hang out in and the only alcohol served is beer and wine. Keep an eye out for their continued schedule of major blues players.

Tinsley Ellis averages about 150 road dates per year.

The music business is very different now from when Tinsley Ellis started out in Georgia in the late 1970s. But there’s one thing that still holds true — for most musicians, to get noticed, nothing beats the road.

Ellis’ blues guitar has taken him pretty much everywhere — “The only place I haven’t been is Asia,” he says. He visits South Florida, where he spent his high school years, for four shows in the coming week. He plays Boca Raton’s Backroom Blues Bar & Grill on Friday, Seminole Casino Coconut Creek on Saturday, Chef John’s American Bistro and Blues in Jupiter on Monday and B.B. King’s at CityPlace in West Palm Beach on Sept. 2.

“In general, the road is how (blues musicians) make a living, whether it’s B.B. King or you’re just starting out,” Ellis said. “It’s just how it’s done. I don’t know of any blues-type musician who can make a living just staying home and making a video or an occasional TV appearance.”
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By ROD STAFFORD HAGWOOD

Lady Wings the Blues this is not.

Cyndi Lauper wants you to know she’s done her homework.

“I thought the blues spoke to what was going on now,” Lauper said. “I love singing this stuff, but I wanted to make a legit record. So I went to Memphis. Memphis has a soul.”

Lauper’s tour supporting her new 11th album, “Memphis Blues,” hits Miami’s Adrienne Arscht Center tonight.

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Lonnie Youngblood was a hotshot sax player on the New York club circuit in the mid-1960s when he crossed paths with Jimmy James, a young musician who was turning heads with his dazzling virtuosity on the electric guitar.

After briefly playing in Youngblood’s band, James went back to using his real last name and conquered the music world as Jimi Hendrix, while Youngblood fronted a series of rhythm and blues bands that toured with James Brown, Jackie Wilson and other ’60s legends.

The friendship between the two endured, though, and in 1969, at the peak of Hendrix’s popularity, the two men recorded several songs in a New York studio that became a coda to their relationship when Hendrix died in London the following year of a drug overdose.

The tunes recorded during those two or three days are the subject of a lawsuit Youngblood filed this spring that claims one of the songs, “Georgia Blues,” was included on a 2003 compilation without his permission and without crediting him as its author.

The suit seeks unspecified lost-income damages from Hendrix’s estate, MCA Records and film director Martin Scorsese, who collaborated on the collection “Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: Jimi Hendrix.” Through representatives, all three parties declined to comment on the lawsuit or didn’t return calls Monday.

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You might think the blues an odd choice for a theater’s debut in its new home. Maybe you’d have a different opinion if you shared Dan Wheetman’s opinion about the music.

Wheetman and Randal Myler created Low Down Dirty Blues, the musical revue with which Florida Stage will make its grand entrance Saturday at its new digs in the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse.

“Whenever you’re going through hard times, music can be a vehicle for releasing anger, frustration and grief, and getting on with your life,” Wheetman said. “The blues is very much like that. In the black culture they often talk about how when they hear someone sing the blues, they smile. There’s an acknowledgement that we’re all in this together.”

Read the full story, see the performance schedule and view photos at the Palm Beach Daily News.

The B.B. King All-Stars, led by guitarist Gary King (center), the house band of B.B. King's Blues Club in CityPlace. (Brandon Kruse / The Post)

More: B.B. King’s at CityPlace more than the sum of its parts

Blues fans who come to B.B. King’s at CityPlace expecting the legend himself may be in for a disappointment. The blues great is expected to make only a visit or two each year.

But a king of another sort is regularly on stage. Literally.

Meet Gary King, the South Florida music mainstay who now heads the house band at the club. And who put together the nine-piece band that rocks the crowd most night with a Southern-flavored mix of blues, rhythm and blues, rock, pop and more.

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Event Listing: Ticket info, directions, more

Come to B.B. Kings Monday (Jan. 25) to hear the electrifying Derek Mack Band play.

$10 at the door gives you access to music, raffles, celebrity guests and more!

Twitter hashtag is #pbptweetup. For more info, follow @pbpost on Twitter.

Help the Red Cross and Haiti, meet local folks and hear some great music. Hope to see you there.

Sponsored by Urban League, Palm Beach County Haiti Relief Coalition and Red Cross, The Association for Women in Communications South Florida Chapter, and The Palm Beach Post.