Fresh from a three-month UK tour with legendary blues guitarist Albert Lee, powerhouse “Queen of Boogie” and “Goddess of Soul” Doña Oxford will perform a benefit under the stars on Saturday evening, August 1, in the courtyard of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 122 S. California Ave. at Foothill in Monrovia. Tickets to the 6:30 p.m. event, which includes dinner and first drink, are $25 each. They can be ordered in advance at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1995961. Proceeds from the evening will benefit the parish’s community service efforts and the building fund for the 1924 church, whose Monrovia roots go back to the 1890s.
Oxford, a longtime friend and colleague of St. Luke’s Rector Neil Tadken, studied her craft with Chuck Berry sideman Johnnie Johnson. Her style fuses old school blues/soul vocals and two-fisted boogie-woogie piano. “Take a bit of Bette, a tad of Tina and a slice of Stansfield, and you get a deluge of Doña,” declares Tadken.
Oxford has performed with a long and growing list of legends including Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Levon Helm, Bob Weir, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Julia Fordham and Shemekia Copeland. Her tours draw devoted fans across Europe, Japan, Canada and the US. “Doña Oxford is one of LA’s underappreciated assets,” says Patrick O’Heffernan, host of the syndicated online Music Fridays program. “Every show is a blowout, with the audience standing, whistling and demanding more. When she tours the UK, stars like Van Morrison ask her to be part of their recording sessions.”
