There Ain’t Nothing Like the Blues

Until now I never was a fan of the blues.  As a teenager my dad use to subtlety brainwash my brothers and I on Sunday afternoon by feeding us to compilations of the blues from public radio.  It was enough to run our roughhousing behinds outside of the house to the streets for some football or basketball.  I was given another dose in the high school jazz band, but back then I was just relieved the notes were easy to play. I wasn’t “feeling it”.  After high school I thought I was done with the blues as a young man in the army, I was old enough to get my heart broken.  But I was still a puppy then and blues wasn’t needed my hurt that episode was just another turn on life and a motivation to keep on going.   Even after the army my respect for the blues faltered.   I was reintroduced to it travelling to the Deep South to watch my best friend graduate from college.  We both clowned the whining and the crying, I didn’t know.  But now I do.

There ain’t nothing like the blues.  Not the flavor of Jazz or the structure of Classical music. Blues is the only equivalent to real pain. The pain you feel when you’re all grown up.  For this type of pain lacks finesse or complexity. You know it’s there for it punches you in the face, the gut and then body slams you all at once.   In this pain you cannot breathe nor do you want to because when you do it hurts all the more.  Oh sure we’ve got rap and metal to mesh anger and those bitter sweet cry jams for love.  Country music got its place too, as it ballad pain and gospel provides the release but nothing and I mean nothing comes close to telling it like the blues. So now looking back on how I use to nearly ridicule this base art form. I now realize there is a fool among us and it is I.

It took a divorce to wake me up to Howlin Wolf and the bellows of Muddy Waters. It took a divorce for it to mean something.  I tried different types of prescriptions like music, going to church and the book of Psalms even another body, but nothing worked for me or made me grieve and forget like the blues.  Now don’t get me wrong each of these other forms have their merit, at least temporarily.  But it was all a quick fix and then I uncovered the blues. The deep seated pain of my heart, no, of my soul l yielded me there.  The Howl of the wolf and the bellow of Muddy Waters kept me there. Now I know now I see. There ain’t anything to express your pain like the blues. Nothing more appropriate.  Playing another sad song is just a fleeting romance it doesn’t justify real pain, the real loss where one gives there all and recovers nothing in return. 

 Let me validate that there ain’t nothing like the blues.  Gospel comes close but it’s still not there.  Gospel reigns on the other side of the hill; when the storm has passed or at least after you’ve passed through the eye. Not the blues.  The blues will carry you through while you’re in that wall of wind and rain.  When you’re wrenching your heart of thunder and lightning, anger and despair, the blues has you.  It’s what triggered my admiration to America’s down home roots.  If you ever need something to bring it out of you, with all natural ingredients nothing is going to surpass those blues.  So when you wake up one morning and your soul is calling you to stay laid down.  I recommend a “Spoonful” of Howlin Wolf and a little “Milk Cream and Alcohol “from John T. Hooker.  That’ll get you started down the path of recovery. Hopefully the wisdom of the blues will follow soon thereafter.