One night in England, Barrence Whitfield jumped off the stage into the crowd. “People parted (like) the Red Sea for me, and I fell flat on my — ” The veteran Boston-area singer pauses. “Actually, you know what happened? Instead of falling on the concrete floor, which I was heading for, a fan jumped in and saved me. I hurt him, of course.
“Whenever I go to England, I see that guy,” Whitfield continues, “and he says, ‘Remember when I saved your life?’ It’s funny — there’s one guy who thought Barrence Whitfield was worth saving.”
Whitfield, a 60-year-old with a shrieking, Little Richard voice, has been subjecting worldwide fans to rock ‘n’ roll aggression since the late 1970s, when he moved from his native New Jersey to Boston for college and landed in a band. The Savages were throwbacks, like their contemporaries in the Blasters and the Beat Farmers, and they had a unique way of throwing their bodies into the performances. “There have been instances of ending the night with tattered clothing and ripped pants, and Peter Greenberg strumming his guitar so his wrists were bleeding,” Whitfield says. “It’s all energy and from the heart. It’s something you couldn’t do at a desk with a computer in your face.”
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The Savages’ new album, “Under the Savage Sky,” is a characteristic combination of musicology and jet propulsion. The band covers not “Sweet Home, Chicago” or “Under the Rainbow” but forgotten Midwestern soul singer Timmy Willis’ 1970 nonhit “I’m a Full Grown Man,” and originals like “The Claw” contain in-joke musical quotes like a snippet of the famous “Summertime Blues” guitar riff. Whitfield’s whooping and hollering is a sloppy counterbalance to Tom Quartulli’s throwback sax-honking.
“Pretty much everything we do in the studio is live. We try to keep that energy in the studio as we would if we came and played out in the clubs,” says Whitfield, who, upon answering the phone for an interview at his Beverly, Mass., home, pauses a 1946 recording by stride pianist Montana Taylor. “We just set ourselves up in one room, and we lit the dynamite, and the dynamite explodes in the studio.”
Growing up in East Orange, N.J., Whitfield had churchgoing parents and a Pentecostal preacher for an uncle. “You would never hear blues music at his house, but you’d always hear the traditional gospel music,” Whitfield recalls. “My mother, at the time, always said, ‘You can listen to your music afterwards, but from the hours of 7 to noon, when we go to church, there’s gospel music on the radio — do not touch the radio.'”
Unlike soul-singing predecessors such as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, Whitfield never had any trouble with the issue of combining blues and gospel music. His parents were religious, but not that religious; as the singer recently told the weekly newspaper Columbus Alive, Whitfield’s father was a jazz buff and tolerated his Jimi Hendrix and Funkadelic posters as long as they were removed when the Pentecostal uncle showed up for a visit. “They were listening to the devil’s music too,” he says. “They were religious to a point, but once they got out of the church, (the radio) pumped back on to whatever the latest soul music was going on at that time.”
After putting out their 1984 debut, “Barrence Whitfield and the Savages,” inspired by punk and garage bands from the Sonics to the Clash, they built a cult audience, particularly in Europe, where old-school R&B and rock ‘n’ roll never fully disappeared. But they never quite made it to even Los Lobos-level commercial success. “When I finally recorded my first 45 (single), I brought it back to New Jersey, (and) I gave it to my father,” Whitfield says. “I think my father was very proud that I was doing something other than a life of crime. … He had a candy store, a variety store — he put it up for all to see. ‘This is my son’s first record!'”
If Whitfield and the Savages had a big break, it came in 1985, playing with the Del Fuegos on a Boston bill with influential British DJ Andy Kershaw in the audience. Whitfield reportedly sang himself into such a frenzy, on a hot summer night, he passed out. “Four of my friends picked me up and carried me off the stage as the band was playing. Everybody thought it was planned, but it wasn’t planned,” says Whitfield, who works at Boston’s venerable Record Exchange, selling vinyl to the YouTube generation. “All I remember was waking up with Kershaw (saying), ‘Are you all right?’ Then: ‘This is wonderful! This is true rock ‘n’ roll!’ I went back to the U.K., and next thing I know, there’s Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) in the audience watching me.”
Steve Knopper is a freelancer.
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When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Schubas Tavern, 3159 N. Southport Ave.
Tickets: $18; 773-525-2508 or www.lh-st.com