“Brother Blues and me, we’re two good lifelong friends. He can depend on me, and I can depend on him.”
from “Brother Blues, Nos. 1 and 2” Copyright 2003 Greg Burgess
“When you’re in trouble, the blues is your best friend,” sings Otis Spann in [+]“Brother Blues and me, we’re two good lifelong friends. He can depend on me, and I can depend on him.”
from “Brother Blues, Nos. 1 and 2” Copyright 2003 Greg Burgess
“When you’re in trouble, the blues is your best friend,” sings Otis Spann in the archeological blues number, “Where Do the Blues Come From?” And so, sometime between 1955 and 2003, decades after and several states away from Mr. Charlie’s farm down in the Delta (answer to the above), I too discovered the same thing, despite our different backgrounds, as my first piano and vocal mentor had long before me.
How do you write a blues song? In a sense you don’t. One blues is every blues, communal in its essence. The great African-American art form has been documented for nearly a hundred years now, with songs enough to content anyone for a lifetime. I never considered penning a whole album of my own until I was hired, with Steve and Andy, to play at the 2003 Billtown Blues Festival in Hughesville, Pennsylvania, and thought to myself “better do some original material.” Yepper, I would’ve found as much camaraderie in singing “unlock the door and let me in” (by Jimmy Nelson) as “if you’ve ever pounded on the door” (from “Weasel’s in the Coop”), except that I felt a responsibility to the hiring committee to be, you know, top-notch.
But one blues isn’t all of the blues either. Jelly Roll Morton long ago could say “Michigan water tastes like sherry wine, the Mississippi water tastes like turpentine” but in the 60’s Buddy Guy felt the need to reply “I think I’ll go back down south, where the water tastes like wine; this Lake Michigan water tastes like turpentine.”
Long ago the inventors of the music all woke up in the morning, caught a freight train to ride, and put on their walking shoes. But in “The End of the Blues,” the man wakes up and doesn’t do either: “I looked around and my baby was still at my side.” Nor does he feel like Robert Johnson. “It’s soon in the morning, and I will not dust my broom; the sun’s as big as China in our 12 by 14 foot room.”
In the 50’s Percy Mayfield prayed “Heaven, please, send to all mankind, understanding and peace in mind, but if it’s not asking too much, please send me someone to love.” In 2003, a man listens to his wife recite the latest claims
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