BLUES FAN TURNS OUT OWN LABEL

On one wall in Bob Rivera’s modest construction company office in the city of Orange hangs a framed poster of a solo mountain climber under whom is written: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Rivera obviously took those words as a call to action when he started a blues record company in Orange County, an area unlikely to challenge Memphis or Chicago as a hotbed of the blues.

But like the message on his wall poster, Rivera realized that if he didn’t lend his support to local blues musicians, perhaps no one else would.

“I used to feel bad for these guys who wouldn’t get any credit and just thought I’d like to do something to help blues people,” Rivera said during an interview this week at a coffee shop near Rivera Irrigation Inc., a construction and landscaping business he has operated for 20 years.

“I never expected to get any money out of this, I just wanted to keep the blues alive. I think today’s kids are brainwashed with a lot of the (Top 40) music. Some of it is good; most of it isn’t very good. I want people to hear what good music can sound like.”

Rivera Records’ first two releases are the debut album by a Los Angeles blues band, the Tomcats, and a reissue of singer-harpist William Clarke’s album, “Can’t You Hear Me Calling?”

The label has also just issued a single by the Orange County-based James Harman Band, “All Night Boogie,” which will be followed later this summer by an album tentatively titled “Extra Napkins.” In addition to the all-blues album for Rivera, the Harman band plans to release a more pop-oriented album for another record label sometime this year.

So far, Rivera, who declined to reveal his age, has received limited but enthusiastic response to his projects from locations as widespread as North Carolina, the Netherlands and Italy. He’s also gotten reaction closer to home.

“Other contractors I work with in the area ask me why I’m doing this--why I’m messing around with this bottom-of-the-barrel music,” Rivera said, referring to the low-priority status blues music has at most major record companies.

“I just love the music. It’s where all great American music comes from.”

Blues also provided a musical foundation for Rivera, whose mother was Italian and father Mexican and who grew up in central Los Angeles surrounded by the blues.

“I was born loving music,” Rivera said. “There was a barbecue stand and record shop across the street from where we lived. We didn’t have a lot of money. My mother died when I was 8, and with my dad, a brother and two sisters all in a small house, I used to sleep in the garage. Across the street, they would play blues all night long, and I would go to sleep so peacefully. I used to save my pennies and buy 45s and 78s. That’s where I really got the blues in me.”

When Rivera moved to Orange County in the 1960s and started his irrigation contracting business, he liked the environment but missed the opportunities to hear the blues to which he’d grown accustomed in Los Angeles.

That void--at least in Rivera’s world--changed in 1980 when he went to the White House in Laguna Beach and first heard the James Harman Band. “I had read about this guy but didn’t think it would be the real blues. But then I heard him play, and I felt like I was reborn,” he said.

Once he got the idea to help fund and promote a blues record for some local act, Rivera’s experience running a construction business taught him not to be hesitant about getting started.

“Four years ago, I didn’t know anything about the music business. But I’ve learned that the best way to do it is just to jump in and get burned. You can go to school forever and get scared and not go into business. Or you can talk to a million other people and get scared and not go into business. So I just did it.

“There was a lot of pain and heartache, and a lot of stomach-turning, but in time we made it. Now, I’ve got it set up like my contractor’s business. The business end is like any other business: You’ve got to be a (client’s) psychologist and friend and everything else.”

As a longtime blues fan, Rivera rejects the criticism that purists have leveled at some white performers over their dabblings in the genre--notably the Blues Brothers (comedians Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi) and more recently actor Bruce Willis.

“Bruce Willis can’t play the harmonica or sing, but that’s not the point; he’s out there promoting the blues. When he gets up and blows harp with Albert Collins, he’s not great, but he’s promoting our music,” Rivera said.

“I just wish there were more young black guys like Robert Cray taking up the blues. But you’ve got to hand it to the white guys like Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Harman and Clarke for opening up the door again and keeping the blues alive.

“I’d like to see one of the really big black pop acts, someone like Tina Turner, make a blues record. Something like that would do a lot to get younger kids interested in the blues.”

But for now, Rivera is concentrating on securing national or international distribution for his record label. He said he’ll be ready to negotiate after he gets two more albums--the Harman LP and a live album by Clarke--out by the end of this year.

“When I have four albums and a single out, that will be enough to show (distributors) that I’m serious,” he said.

Yet, while Rivera sees the potential to make the record company financially as well as philanthropically successful, he still treats it with the enthusiasm of a hobbyist.

“Everybody has to have an outlet for enjoyment, and this is mine. At least I’m not throwing my money away on horses or drugs or alcohol.”

When he talks, though, it’s clear that there’s a little of the gambler in his approach to the music business.

“You’ve just got to roll the dice,” Rivera said. “I could be like any other independent label that just makes its costs back. But I’d rather just throw it out there. It might not come back at all, but then again it might come back tenfold.”

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS: Monday brings the release of the Beatles’ landmark “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album on compact disc, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of the LP’s original release date. At Orange County’s Beatles headquarters--Pepperland Records in Anaheim--the date, June 1, also marks the 10th anniversary of owner Mike Lefebvre’s first Beatles convention in 1977 and the fifth anniversary of the store’s opening. Lefebvre will be celebrating Sgt. Pepper week at the store with “Sgt. Pepper” CD giveaways.

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for the following Pacific Amphitheatre concerts: the Beach Boys (Aug. 14); Lo Gramm and Patty Smyth (Aug. 1), and Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach (Sept. 13). . . . A third Bon Jovi show at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre has been added for June 22. Tickets will go on sale Sunday. . . . Joe Ely will do a solo acoustic show on June 13 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, and Peter Case will open. Doc Severinsen’s performance at the Coach House scheduled for today has been postponed until August. A date has not been set.