“Blues” music and it’s history has influenced so many. As a performer, it’s hits me to the core... as a “Blues Editor”, it has truly been a “labor of love”!
... I’ve never professed to knowing all about blues music. I can merely relate what makes me feel good or bad, bound and determined. To the novice, blues music may be heard as a slow, non-danceable, melancholy dirge. But to the enlightened it has many facets... it is always moving whether fast or slow. It grabs hold and allows you to become uninhibited... aware of that smile on your face or of your inner sexual self.
I wrote about my feelings on “da blues” when I first became a Blues editor in 1993...
the blues had grabbed me as a child but now I got to spread da word!
“It’s an understanding, unspoken...you fill in the lines. It’s a trust, a truth, a triumph to reveal, even in defeat...it’s the bottomline. Everyone has the ‘blues’ whether they realize it or not. Without it we would be one dimension, dull, naive. It’s the guts, the soul, the sensual, the up, the down...the reason we are free to dance and sing and shout out...laugh and cry. It’s being open, for all to witness, baring all, bar-none.
It’s the depths of despair, the height of release, the aliment, the cure, the foreplay, the afterglow, the beginning and the end. A bond of soulmates in a phrase, a howl, a sigh or a touch...it’s DELIVERANCE!
...and that’s the truth!
Once I played a fancy gig at a big hotel and the Room Captain went on and on about how we had to play “dance music” NOT blues...I beg your pardon...he was a novice at that point. But boy, did we show him. The crowd couldn’t help themselves... the blues took hold and they couldn’t stop dancing and even paid us extra to stay and keep the party rollin’...it was then that he saw the “blue light”!
You HAVE to dance to the blues... whether mentally or physically. I love to see folks wiggling around to the blues... their endorphins have taken over... they can’t help themselves. It is a powerful thing, these blues. Even if you thought you couldn’t “dance” somehow it becomes a free-for-all because it’s soooo natural... that blue rhythm.
Maybe it’s a broader spectrum to some folks than others, this “blues” thang...this “soul” thang., but don’t ever deny yourself the experience of the blues and all of it’s variety.
As great contemporary harmonica player-singer-songwriter, Charlie Musselwhite said,
“The blues reminds us that we are human!
