Guitar Autographed By Legends A High Note For Blues Fan

Sports fans beg their athlete heroes to sign bats, balls and jerseys. Stargazers pester Hollywood icons for signatures on movie posters or photographs.

So what does a guy obsessed with the blues do?

Paul Wilkening ain’t nothin’ but an autograph hound-dog on a six-stringed quest for musical memorabilia.

The Spokane man collects the John Hancocks of the soulful gods he worships on a blue (naturally) Fender telecaster guitar.

Blues greats like B.B. King, James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Rory Block, Norton Buffalo and Charlie Musselwhite are among 29 artists to scrawl their names in black across the body and pick guard of the shiny electric guitar.

Wilkening, 45, says the magic of the blues makes it worth turning a perfectly fine instrument into something he won’t play for fear of rubbing off the precious ink.

“A lot of people think this music is just about crying and dying, but it’s not,” he adds. “This is light, happy music. If it doesn’t make you want to get up and dance, there’s something wrong with you.”

It seems odd for a white, middle-class real estate agent to be so swept away by music spawned in the Mississippi Delta by downtrodden African slaves and their descendants. Married to his wife, Tuija, for 21 years, the man doesn’t know squat about those “woman-done-me-dirt” themes common to the blues.

But Wilkening, who presides over the 400-member Inland Empire Blues Society, contends his favorite music is colorblind. That mass appeal accounts for the national blues revival that has even caught fire in good ol’ whitebread Spokane.

Hey, we have a well-earned reputation for playing both kinds of music: country and western. But in the last couple of years, maybe 20 area clubs have started featuring regular live blues.

Wilkening was on an autograph search in one of those smoke-filled joints the other night. We met at the Waterin’ Hole in Coeur d’Alene, where I drove after work to catch the legendary “Little Charlie and the Nightcats.”

Little Charlie Baty may never make the Top 40. But as any blues lover knows, the musician plays a guitar like Ken Griffey Jr. plays a Louisville Slugger.

After the first set, Wilkening approached the stage with guitar in hand. Baty was flattered to oblige.

That doesn’t always happen. In fact, Wilkening’s first attempt for a famous signature fizzled when he was snubbed by temperamental Grammy-winner Robert Cray. “He couldn’t pay me enough now to sign my guitar,” gripes Wilkening.

Cray was playing the downtown Masonic Temple before touring Europe with the Rolling Stones. Wilkening, who helped unload the band’s equipment, decided to stick his new guitar in the empty Green Room until he could approach the star.

Only the Green Room wasn’t empty. “There was Robert Cray and all the band staring at me. I felt my stomach go up to my throat.”

Embarrassed, Wilkening quickly set the guitar down and closed the door. Cray followed. “Robert Cray is very, very cool. He talks in a soft voice and he’s real low key,” explains Wilkening. “He just looked at me and lifted his head as if to say, ‘Hey, come over here.”’ Wilkening began stammering how all he wanted was an autograph. Cray listened impassively. Without saying a word, he slipped back in the Green Room.

After the concert, Wilkening excitedly retrieved his guitar case. “Opening it was like Christmas morning,” he says. “But when I pulled back the top of the case, there was the guitar. Blank.”

B.B. King - the biggest blues star of all - was not such a jerk. “Seeing him backstage is like going to see the godfather,” says Wilkening. “He only sees one person at a time. B.B. sits and listens. He cares about you.”

Though Wilkening’s guitar is running out of room, he’s saving the spot under the strings for two favorites: Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt.

When the mission is complete, he vows never to sell the instrument. Someday, he says, he will hand it down to his son, Christopher.

“I’ve never been an autograph hound in my life,” adds Wilkening, his voice taking on a slightly sheepish tone. “I always thought how sycophantic something that would be, but here I am.”

Oh, yeaaaaah.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo