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Beginner’s Guide to the Blues
At least a decade ago, someone sent me a list of ways to live the Blues. I read it, loved it, and immediately lost it.
This past weekend, I finally attacked some cartons marked “miscellaneous” that have been sitting in my office since we moved into our new house over a year ago — and there, buried in a huge stack of papers I’ve been schlepping pointlessly from place to place for years, was the Blues instruction manual. I’d apparently had the good sense to print it out before losing it.
I wish I could credit the author. If you know who wrote this, please say so in the comments. I pass it along to you in part because it’s too much fun to keep to myself and in part because if it’s here at Ricochet, I’ll remember where I put it.
Here you go: The Beginner’s Guide to the Blues.
1. Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning….”
2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.”
3. The Blues is simple: after you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes…sort of:
Got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town.
Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound.
4. The Blues is not about choice: “You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch — ain’t no way out.”
5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don’t travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain’t even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.
6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.
7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the Blues in any place that don’t get rain.
8. A man with male pattern baldness ain’t the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg ’cause you were skiing is not the Blues. Breaking your leg ’cause a alligator be chomping on it is.
9. You can’t have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.
10. Good places for the Blues:
- highway
- jailhouse
- empty bed
- bottom of a whisky glass
Bad places for the Blues:
- Bloomingdale’s
- gallery openings
- Ivy League institutions
- golf courses
11. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, ‘less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.
12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if:
- you older than dirt
- you blind
- you shot a man in Memphis
- you can’t be satisfied
No, if:
- you have all your teeth
- you were once blind but now can see
- the man in Memphis lived
- you have a 401K or trust fund
13. Blues is not a matter of color, it’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the Blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the Blues.
14. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
- cheap wine
- whisky or bourbon
- muddy water
- nasty black coffee
The following are NOT Blues beverages:
- Perrier
- Chardonnay
- Snapple
- Slim Fast
15. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.
16. Some Blues names for women:
- Sadie
- Big Mama
- Bessie
- Fat River Dumpling
17. Some Blues names for men:
- Joe
- Willie
- Little Willie
- Big Willie
18. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Jennifer, Debbie, and Heather can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.
19. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:
- name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
- name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi, etc.)
- last name of a president (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)
20. I don’t care how tragic your life is: if you own a computer, you cannot sing the Blues.
Image of John Lee Hooker via johannasvisions.com.
Published in General
I once interviewed for my public TV series that gentleman whose photograph opens this article. He was living in Silicon Valley in an anonymous suburban house with a late model car in the driveway. His Grammies were in a glass citrine in the living room, and like any suburbanite he had his Christmas cards (in this case from Eric Clapton, Van Morrison and Keith Richards) on the mantel. He also wore a silk suit that put my pinstripe suit to shame. He sipped water and his lunch was prepared by a beautiful young woman who was apparently his assistant/nurse/etc.
Sorta blows-up your stereotype, doesn’t it?
BTW: John Lee’s voice was so gravelly and deep that it was almost impossible to mike. It recorded like the rumble of thunder . . . or God, whom I’ve often thought JLH must have resembled.
1st step to success in Blues Music: sell your soul to the Devil at a crossroads at midnight.
One of the saddest things I’ve seen: a few years ago, in Clarksdale, Mississippi — arguably the home of the Blues and, as a result, the cradle of American popular music — there are still a few truly authentic juke joints. One, Red’s, is about as real as they get: shabby, decorated with Christmas lights and old beer posters, the chairs and tables mismatched yard sale items, and on the stage someone amazing and local and old playing (usually his) heart out and singing (usually her) soul.
There’s always a line of folks trying to get in. And they’re always over 40. Standing outside one Saturday night I noticed that hordes of younger people (almost all African American) were walking by and standing in line at another place down the road.
“Is that another juke?” I asked.
“Nope,” was the reply. “That’s just a club that plays hip-hop. From a DJ.”
So this great American music is, quite literally, dying.
It’s dispiriting. We’re losing our own musical cultural heritage. A friend of mine who is in her early 20s asked me the other day who I was listening to, and I told her “Coltrane”. She laughed and said, “No, they’re called Coldplay.” I died a little inside. She’d never heard of John Coltrane or knew why he was important.
I’ve heard of John Coltrane, but haven’t heard much of his music.
I like knowing the the musical heritage of artists I like and connecting the dots.
Not being a music historian, I have no idea why John Coltrane was important.
I’m sure a little googling could fix that, but what is your take?
He’s one of, if not the, greatest saxophonists of all time and remains one of the giants of jazz. Between blues and jazz, especially for black culture, there is a rich history of skilled musicianship and talent. Instead of expanding upon it, today’s youth are ignorant of it, not knowing them as true American forms of music. Instead we have DJs and rappers mixing rhyming over synthetic beats who wouldn’t know how to hold an instrument let alone play it. When I look at the difference in output from the 50s-60s to today, not stylistically but purely on musicianship, I’m left scratching my head and wondering what the heck happened.
Coltrane suffered from the same problem as Miles Davis – it’s hard to dance to their music. (-:
I wouldn’t say musicianship has gone down – there are some awesome musicians playing out there. I’d say that what has happened is that the music scene has fractured into many small genres, and therefore you have to actively seek out the music you like instead of having it pre-filtered for you and played on your FM station.
That, plus we tend to have excessive nostalgia for the past, and especially for the music we listened to in our formative years. But when we think of music from our past we filter out all the dreck. The 60’s produced Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones, but also the Flying Purple People Eater and the Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. The 50’s had great jazz and blues, but also a lot of teenie-bopper crap.
If anything, today’s music is more experimental and more interesting overall than it was in the past. It’s just that now you can’t find it by turning on the radio or walking into a club. You have to go looking for it.
That’s true, but the average American was conversant with jazz and blues 50 years ago. They knew who these people were. I don’t see the same number of people even interested in those styles of music. They have become niches. To some degree, it was an avenue for black entry into mainstream culture by showing musical proficiency and innovation. Now we have people rhyming to fake beats while imitating criminal gang behavior. Are the P Diddy and Jay Z of today really comparable talent-wise with BB King or Charles Mingus? Yet how many under 30 are familiar with the latter? This isn’t even about losing touch with the Classics or other parts of Western culture; this is our own uniquely American culture. It’s all becoming disposable.
Admitting my ignorance was totally worth it.
Thank you.
I saw some of the Ken Burns series on Jazz (available to stream on Netflix), but guess I will have to make it a point to see the Martin Scorsesee series on the blues (not available to stream on netflix).
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Ken-Burns-Jazz/70202576
http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Martin-Scorsese-Presents-The-Blues-A-Musical-Journey/60031958