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Beat goes on for Christy Bluhm Lack of formal training does not deter singer

By Naomi R. Kooker, Globe Correspondent, 7/15/2001

In between sipping an espresso and nursing a glass of water, Christy Bluhm sings while the sun sets. With a voice that goes high and low, soft and sweet, whisper to wild, the 24-year-old Framingham resident gives the outdoor diners at Romaine's in Northborough a little ''Paper Moon.'' And just as the sun fades, and a chill in the air forces diners to decide if they should go inside for dessert, Bluhm polishes off a bittersweet ''Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'' ''I've always been a spotlight hound,'' Bluhm said after the gig. Now the jazz and blues vocalist has got a gig every Friday night throughout the summer at Romaine's. Two other musicians (on this night it's sax player Ed Harrow of West Newton, and pianist Bruce Thomas of Stow) accompany Bluhm on some low-tech, high-nostalgia pieces. The trio sets up in the corner of the restaurant's outdoor brick patio and exchanges riffs and banter in between sets as couples, families, and friends eat dinner al fresco. When she's done, Bluhm scoots back to Framingham to the Rat Pack, a supper-club-like restaurant, for a second set. ''It's just great to know every week I can get up and sing for a few hours for the weekends at least,'' she said. When she's not singing, she waits tables, tends bar, and does whatever is needed at the Rat Pack for some bread-and-butter money. Hers is an untrained voice, but to her colleagues and her audience that doesn't matter. ''She's great,'' Harrow said. ''Very nice singing, very talented natural singer.'' Since age 2 (she has recordings of herself singing with her grandfather), Bluhm, a Pennsylvania native, has been belting out tunes simply because she loves to sing. She grew up in a musical family: Her father plays acoustic guitar, her mother plays the piano, and everyone sings. Between her parents' different tastes, she grew up listening to all styles of music. ''Jazz is a great medium,'' she said. ''My favorite is Sarah Vaughn.'' The very first time she performed in front of an audience was for her high school's freshman orientation after her family moved to New Hampshire. She had taught herself guitar. She played ''Our House,'' the Crosby, Stills, Nash&Young song, giving it everything she had: ''I had nothing to lose at that point,'' she says. She got a standing O. In high school her stepfather, a pianist, vocalist, and bass player, started a band, Swingset, with Bluhm. They performed standard jazz for parties and local fund-raisers. ''It was great,'' she said. ''I was very spoiled, because most of my friends were baby-sitting and waiting tables, and I could go sing and make money.'' At Emerson College, she opted for communications over the performing arts, simply because she didn't think the former would be practical. She performed with her guitar at colleges, on Emerson's radio station, and for school productions. In the fall she is heading to Berklee College of Music (with the help of some grants and a lot of loans) to major in vocal performance, though she admits it's not a very practical thing to do, either. ''But,'' she said, ''it's what I need to do, so ....'' After attending Emerson, she moved to Burlington, Vt., where she wrote her own music and started a band, the Vibrokings. For two years she laid down original songs for a compilation charity CD, ''Blues in the Green Mountains,'' the profits of which went to a children's cancer recovery camp in Vermont. It's also where she met her boyfriend, Scott Parrow, with whom she lives. In the early '90s she performed for Vice President Al Gore during a Democratic Party fund-raiser at the Sheraton in Manchester, N.H. ''The Secret Service patted us down and checked my flute to make sure it wasn't a weapon,'' Bluhm said. Though Bluhm, 16 at the time, said she found the chance to perform at the event exciting, she added, ''It definitely wasn't the most responsive crowd.'' But she has had worse responses. At 19, she was booked to play a club in Weirs Beach, N.H., right in the middle of biker weekend - a rough-and-tumble showcase of Harley hogs and leather-clad riders. Bluhm was wearing a pink satin dress. ''And they didn't like it,'' she says. So a few motorcycle mamas, one in particular, approached her onstage: ''One of them said, `Who do you think you are, there, Cinderella?' ... I don't know why they hired us to do jazz during motorcycle weekend.'' In other venues, when people clap and join in on familiar tunes, that's the sort of response Bluhm likes. ''It's very rewarding,'' she said. ''The singer has so much power - good or evil,'' said colleague Thomas, a Berklee piano teacher of 20 years. ''They take over the group, they're always the focal point, whether they're the leader or not. They're the person people are looking at.'' Thomas, in a nod to Bluhm, added: ''She's a delight.'' This story ran on page W9 of the Boston Globe on 7/15/2001. ý Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.