Blues in the Soul

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
Jimi Hendrix

I drove home from a rich meal of fried shrimp and a dessert called Death By Chocolate to the sounds of one of my favorite radio shows, "Highway 61". Our local public radio station has made Friday into a blues night. They play three blues shows back to back, and it makes for a very nice way to relax after a long, hectic week of crap.

The sun was setting, and as I flew down the highway, Howlin' Wolf's big wonderful voice filled up my car. It's said he was a giant of a man, more than six feet tall and weighing in at 300 plus pounds. Nobody else has a voice like his. It's raw and powerful, yet capable of presenting every subtle nuance of the lyrics.

I have always wished that I could have seen him perform. The biographies and reports that I've read say he swayed like a man possessed. He got his nickname from the way he howls when he sings. I think I would have enjoyed seeing him live. When he howls in the recordings, it's like an electrical current runs right up my spine.

The blues move me. I don't know if I absorbed it gradually through the water and the red clay of Mississippi, but there is something in those simple patterns that feels elementally right. Even though I don't know the harsh life of Delta farming, I, too, have baked in the sweltering heat of Mississippi summers. I've played in cow pastures and waded in creeks. I've eaten real barbecue and gotten the sauce from ear to ear. I've read Faulkner and Welty, and I recognize family and community members in their stories. I've seen incredible prejudice and incredible unity in the face of hatred. I've known people who are fulfill every Southern stereotype and others who completely destroy them. It hasn't been necessarily the same experience of a Delta Blues artist, but it has been a Mississippi life, barring a few extended trips elsewhere.

I love the Delta Blues most of all. Simple guitars and bared emotions, tales of love, loss, and revenge, the human heart exposed with all its gold and dross before refining, these are what I hear in those oldest and purest blues. When I feel my worst, I turn to Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and the magic master of them all, Robert Johnson. I dance and sing, feeling the slide guitar pulling the weariness away.

All in all, it was a great way to end a cruddy week. As the sun hung on the edge of the horizon, and the rolling ultra-green Mississippi pine hills unfolded on either side of the highway, I felt the emotional catharsis of the blues, and I felt at peace with world.