Pop : Cray, Hooker and Cooder: Contrasts

The study in contrasts on display Saturday at the Universal Amphitheatre left one yearning for something in between, a performance not as seemingly unrehearsed as the opening-act pairing of blues great John Lee Hooker with guitar maestro Ry Cooder but more loose than the tightly controlled, occasionally emotionless guitar virtuosity of headliner Robert Cray.

For the most part, Cray’s set was thoroughly agreeable. Few can match his plangent playing when he does let loose, and his voice dripped so much soul and sensuality that it was easy, if you didn’t listen to the words too closely, to imagine that his mostly woman-done-me-wrong songs were really tender professions of love--or at least lust.

But Cray’s band, and the front man himself, were almost too tight, coming across as if they hadn’t missed a note since George Bush was vice president. Even when Cray broke a string at the start of the solo in “I Was Warned,” the smoothly suave title track of his latest album, he didn’t miss a beat.

Hooker missed several, but the 75-year-old legend can be forgiven a few mistakes on the strength of his phenomenal career as a progenitor of American blues. His set’s real disappointment was the placidity of Cooder, who perhaps quite graciously sought not to overshadow Hooker but in doing so rarely displayed the command of the guitar that has brought him such critical acclaim.