Nepal’s Prakash Slim has been living the blues

Prakash Slim is a country blues musician and educator based in…wait for it…Nepal. His remarkable story is straight out of the history of the blues.

He was born in 1980 during the rainy season in a field in the small village of Lamatar, just south-east of Kathmandu in Nepal. Nepal is a country of 28m people, situated between India to the south and China to the north. It has eight of the world’s highest mountains, including Everest and a very ancient culture.

Prakash’s village saw its first electric bulb in 1983 and its first automobile in 1995. Although Nepal is now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, much of the country remains very poor – around one third of the population lives on under $3.20 a day and the GDP is only around $30bn (compare that to South Korea, with a similarly sized population and a GDP of $1.6tr.)

Prakash’s father passed away at a young age, leaving his mother to provide for three children by working in a neighbour’s field. Food and clothing was scarce and the annual festival was much anticipated by Prakash, when an uncle would gift him a set of new clothes. Life was tough.

So, perhaps it’s no wonder that Prakash has gravitated towards the blues. He’s lived the blues, growing up in a rural village with significant hardships, and the road to the future paved with considerable difficulties.

After becoming an accomplished guitarist and playing in a number of bands in Nepal’s lively rock scene, Prakash has become an acoustic bluesman, with Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt as his guiding lights. He’s now a recognized, internationally affiliated Artist/Performer and Educator of the Blues with the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi.

The recent lockdowns because of the pandemic have enabled Prakash to play in a number of international blues events, so we were delighted at Down at the Crossroads to have the opportunity to chat to him:

Gary: For someone born in rural Nepal to become a blues artist sounds like an amazing story. Tell us briefly how you first started playing the guitar and how did you get started performing.

Prakash: Well, I was raised by a loving, loyal family but we had very limited means. I went to a public school where, instead of desks and benches, we had mats made of straw. When I was young the only ambition I had was survival. Ambition, as far as I was concerned, was a privilege for rich kids.

I was interested in music from a young age. I’d play music by drumming against a water container and sing songs all day.  Music drew me in. My most prized possession back then was a bicycle that my sister gave me after she landed a job. Now I wanted to learn and play the guitar but I didn’t have the money to buy one, so I sold my bicycle to buy my first guitar. I told my family that a friend had taken it for a few days! But anyway, I got the guitar and started playing.

For two years, I searched for a mentor who could teach me everything I needed to know about music theory. Finally I found a teacher, and even though he lived 10 kms away from my home, my passion for music was so great that I never missed a lesson. Come storm or rain, I always arrived ahead of time and ready to learn.

I worked hard at my music for a number of years and was able to join my mentor, the legendary C.B. Chhetri’s band and gigged in a circuit of restaurants playing mostly rock music. I kept busy playing lead and rhythm guitar and bass, and doing vocals for various bands throughout Nepal.

Gary: Given your background, growing up with very little, is there a particular resonance for you with the blues, in their original setting in the struggles of black Americans?

Prakash: There are a lot of differences between African Americans and me, but, it’s true, we faced difficulties in life like education, economic depression, and discrimination. So many of the social issues are similar.

Gary: What blues artists did you first encounter, and which ones are important to you?

Prakash: I liked to listen to Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and many other rock blues artists.  For over 12 years I played in rock bands and I’ve tried to give the songs I play an urban blues feel. When I first heard B.B. King’s recordings I was eager to learn the magical intervals: sixths, ninths, major and minor thirds. I wanted to learn his bee-sting vibrato technique. Then when I heard the country blues artists like Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and many others, I knew this was the style that most spoke to my heart. So, now these country blues legends are the most important to me.

Gary: Has where you live been an advantage or disadvantage in pursing your art?

Prakash: Well, that’s an interesting question! My life experiences, including my hardships and struggles, are reflected in my music. I really want to express my experiences and feelings through the blues. But then, the limited access I have to instruments, equipment, sheet music and online music other than YouTube is a real disadvantage for me.

Gary: What sort of interest in blues music do you find in Nepal? Is there any resistance to it as Western music? Is it confined to Kathmandu?

Prakash: Well, we have a history in Nepal of the blues that goes back three decades, so I don’t think there’s any real resistance to the blues as western music. Some well-known blues bands are still active. People are interested in the blues but most people think that the blues start with B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Very few people know country blues, all the early stuff which is root of the modern music. Blues in Nepal, for sure, is centred in the capital and major cities and really, we have very few platforms and venues for the blues.

Gary: Are you able to make a living with your music?

Prakash: It’s very hard to survive as a musician in Nepal. It’s difficult to convince people how important music is for all ages and walks of life. For musicians of all genres, of course we have some pubs, restaurants and hotels to play. But for me, there is not much of a platform as a country bluesman.

Gary: How did you get your nickname, Prakash Slim? That’s a very cool blues name!

Prakash: Well, when I finished some serious blues research funded by the Mount Zion Memorial Fund in Mississippi, Dr. T. DeWayne Moore gave me the name. Prakash “Slim” Papa Pokharel. But when I got some international platforms, many friends suggested that I go for something shorter so we settled on Prakash Slim – “Prakash” represents Nepal and “Slim” represents the land where the blues began.

Gary: Tell us about your work in promoting blues music in schools.

Prakash: Well, blues is not only the music but also a culture. Without knowing its history, blues would be incomplete. We can empower and educate people through the blues. Knowing about the blues helps race relations and makes aware people of social issues. I’ve been teaching blues in schools here for some time now. My students know very little about black communities in the US and the problems they faced. I teach them that blues is an experience of life. I also teach them to play instruments and how to write song lyrics. I’m very happy that some of the students from grade three and four have now started playing slide as well! This year I did a blues exhibition in one of my schools. So, blues education is very important and I feel proud to be a part of it.

Gary: You recently collaborated with a friend of mine, Fabrizio Poggi in Italy. Tell us about that. [catch our recent chat with Fabrizio here]

Prakash: Well, Fabrizio Poggi is a renown Italian blues harmonica player and Grammy nominee. He and his wife Angelina and I connected as friends when I did an interview for Blues Radio International. Both of them are great human beings!

After talking for few days, Angelina said to me, “Why don’t you and Fabrizio do something together? I really would love to see you playing together. It would be a great message of hope for the world. A musician from Nepal and another from Italy? Why not? The coronavirus won’t let us leave our homes but we can travel all over the world through music.”

So, I was very excited and happy to do play with a legendary blues artist. I asked if we could do a favourite number of mine, a Robert Johnson song. I will always be grateful to Fabrizio and Angelina for this opportunity.

Gary: Prakash, tell us about your ambitions and hopes for the future.

Prakash: I really want to establish myself as an acoustic bluesman. I hope one day to play the blues with a National guitar in Mississippi. I consider that the sacred land of the blues – the blues Mecca. I want to spread blues in every corner of the world.

Gary: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected Nepal and has it affected your music making?

Prakash: We are all living in different and strange times. Nepal was not much affected by the pandemic in April and May, but we now see the number of affected people and deaths starting to go up. So, of course, yes, it has affected my music making badly. Schools and colleges are closed and all the venues are too.

Gary: Thanks, Prakash. We wish you well in your music making and every success in the future. Hopefully we’ll hear a lot more from you!

Blues in the Time of Corona #7

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, we’re choosing a few songs to reflect on, maybe to lift our spirits a bit as we go through it.

This week’s song is B B King’s There Must Be A Better World Somewhere. It was on the album of the same name, B B’s twenty seventh studio album released in 1981, and for which he won a Grammy.

Like a lot of blues songs, it bemoans the way things are, the woman who’s breaking hearts, but looks hopefully toward a better future.

Some of us are merely inconvenienced by the lockdowns we’re experiencing – none of our family are sick, we’ve got enough to eat, to drink and to entertain ourselves with – and, really, so what if our movement is curtailed a bit for a while? Others of us have been sick or have lost loved ones. Some of us have lost jobs and have been hit financially. And many people around the world are quite literally starving because of the necessary lockdowns. For a lot of people, it’s been a tough time.

B B’s song reminds us of the old Persian adage: This too will pass. Hang on in there. (And if you can, reach out to someone who needs some help).

If it ain’t here, maybe in the year after
Instead of tears, I’ll learn all about laughter
Meanwhile, I’m stuck out here, Lord knows it just ain’t fair
But I know, yes, I know that there must be a better world somewhere

 

Blues in the Time of Corona #5

For this week’s Blues in the Time of Corona, we’re going with Flesh and Bone, a song by Buddy Guy and Van Morrison on Buddy Guy’s 2015 Grammy nominated album Born To Play Guitar, which was dedicated to the late, great B B King.

Morrison and Guy share vocals and, as well as Buddy Guy’s sweet guitar, there are some lovely gospel-sounding harmonies. The chorus reminds us that:

This life is more than
Flesh and bone
Turn back now before you’re gone.

That seems to me to have a particular resonance at the moment. The world has been turned upside down and there’s a lot of suffering out there. We expected a lot of older people to be badly affected by the virus, but we’ve seen a lot of younger people dying as well. We’ve suddenly become aware of our own mortality. Having to stop work and being confined to home, watching the news and catching some of the anxiety of the day, has given us the opportunity to think more about some of the bigger questions of life.

So Flesh and Bone seems like a song for the moment.

Praying away the blues

These are troubled times for us all, for sure. The Coronvirus pandemic is sweeping the world and normal life is impossible as we self-isolate, keep our social distance, wash our hands, and try and keep ourselves and each other safe.

(Photo by Miguel Medina)

Suddenly we’re in a situation in which we feel out of control. For those of us in the wealthy parts of the world, life has never been so good – healthcare, nutrition, peaceable times, leisure and the ability to spend on non-necessities, overall are better than they’ve ever been in the history of the world. Apart from the small matter of the despoiled planet, which to many people still seems personally unthreatening, life is pretty good for most of us. But here we are, suddenly feeling vulnerable. We’re suddenly beginning to understand, just a little bit of the uncertainty that people in poverty in the two-thirds world face, who are threatened by the global pandemic of tuberculosis – it kills 4,000 people a day – or by malaria, which causes more than three hundred million acute illnesses and kills at least one million people every year – nearly 3,000 a day – or the hundreds of thousands displaced, injured or killed because of conflict.

For sure we need to take the warnings about this pandemic seriously for ourselves and others, but how do we cope with the fear and anxiety that can take root? Keb’ Mo’ comes to mind here – “get on your knees and pray.”

Which is clearly what Blind Willie Johnson did in the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which killed 50 million people worldwide. In his God Don’t Never Change, Johnson looks back to his experience of God in those times:

God in the time of sickness
God in the doctor too
In the time of the influenza
He truly was a God to you
Well he’s God, God don’t never change
He’s God, always will be God.

Here’s great version by Ashley Cleveland:

Prayer crops up a surprising amount in the blues – perhaps not surprising given its roots in the hardship and suffering of black communities. For people whose life choices are limited, who face hardship and troubles, often there is no option but to pray for help. Even Robert Johnson, often (mistakenly) more associated with the devil because of the crossroads myth, appeals to God in his song Cross Road Blues, “Asked the Lord above to have mercy; save poor Bob if you please.” Muddy Waters who, like many blues artists had grown up in the church, doesn’t seem to have lost at least some of what he learned at a young age, and knew where to turn when things got bad –  “I be’s troubled, Lord, I’m troubled, I’m all worried in my mind”, he sings in I Be’s Troubled.

Son House in his Preachin’ Blues says he “went into my room, I bowed down to pray”. Problem was, “the blues come along and they blowed my spirit away”, presumably the “old worried heart disease.” as he later referred to the blues. Same thing happens again for Son House in Death Letter Blues, where he’s in his room praying when he gets the terrible news that the woman he loved had died.

B B King, in the bluesy Servant’s Prayer, prays to the Lord to:

Keep me safe from hurt and harm
When I’m burdened or I’m lonely
Comfort me within Your arms.

Trixie Smith’s Praying Blues from the early 1920s, catches this note of needing to turn to prayer when trouble comes:

Hope you don’t know half the trouble I’ve seen…
Nobody knows but the good Lord and me,
Lordy, lord, won’t you hear my plea

We find Lightnin’ Hopkins in Prayin’ Ground Blues, also praying in a situation of some desperation:

Well, I went down to my prayin’ ground
Wooo, fell down on my bended knees
Now mama we ain’t got no home
Oh, the poor children runnin’ cryin’
Now mama we ain’t got no home
Take heed to Mother fair, trust in the Maker your Lord.

We get anxious, not only about ourselves, but about those we love. Bob Dylan’s Protect My Child expresses the prayer of every parent. More than ourselves we wish good things for our children. Here’s a great version by Susan Tedeschi:

Sometimes praying doesn’t seem to come easy, even when we want to – you remember Jesus’s disciples kept falling asleep on him when they should have been praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Eric Bibb has a great version of the Rev Gary Davis song, I Heard the Angels Singing, where the singer is opposed by the devil:

What you reckon the devil said
I heard the angels singing
He said that heaven’s door is closed, go home don’t pray.

But, “I heard the angels singing,” and he presses on to the valley to pray, Bibb’s animated performance accompanying the victorious pray-er.

Then there’s Kelly Joe Phelps’s Down to the Praying Ground from his excellent Brother Sinner and the Whale album, where Phelps’s prayer is for forgiveness and mercy, a cry from a man who has exhausted his own resources.

The cry of distress to the Lord, the anxieties that disturb the mind, are all, of course, familiar to readers of the Psalms – Israel’s blues book.

In Psalm 6.6, we get “I am weary with my moaning; Every night I flood my bed with tears”. Psalm 38.17 says, “For I am ready to fall; And my pain is ever with me”. The Psalmist’s response to the injustice of life and the calamities that befall him and his people is to cry out to God, “O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer (Psalm 17:1); In my distress I called upon the Lord, And cried to my God for help (Psalm 18:6).

At such times in life, it seems the only thing to do, even for those of us who rarely pray or admit our need of God. The God of the Bible of course is the God of the needy, the oppressed, the afflicted, those with that “old worried heart disease”. As the Psalms writer says confidently in Psalm 120.1, “I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me”.

How God answers prayer, of course is a mysterious business. In fact, the whole business of prayer defies explanation. Why does God seem to answer our prayers sometimes and not to hear at other times? Why should God answer our prayers in the midst of the current pandemic when there’s a whole world of suffering out there?

One of the best approaches to this that I’ve seen comes from a song by Canadian blues singer, Colin Linden (and talented music producer, music director and songwriter). It’s called God Will Always Remember Your Prayers and is on his superb 2009 album From the Water.

Linden asserts “God will always remember your prayers”. This even “though it seems like he ain’t even there”. How many of us can identify with that? But Linden goes on:

“Just get on your knees and pray,
He might not answer right away
But God will always remember your prayers”

Linden notes what we’ve just been talking about, “We all pray our deepest prayer when trouble comes.” Ain’t that the truth? But insightfully, Linden suggests that God “only longs to hear us pray his will be done.” Our prayers are made from the limited perspective of our own circumstances and difficulties. Maybe God sees the bigger picture of our lives and we need to come to a place of trust. The song goes on:

“In this world understand that he might have a better plan
But he will always remember your prayers
God will always remember your prayers”

Not only might God not seem to answer your prayers, suggests Linden, he might actually leave you for a while “stranded”, not able to “find a way”, not able to “tell the darkness from the day”. Says Linden,

“He might leave you on your own
And let you find your way back home.”

So where does that leave us? The song’s last verse gets to the heart of things – when things are at their darkest and “you think your words can’t reach so far above”, well, maybe “all that you can give him is your love” – at this point, at an end of our own resources,

“The answer you’ve been waiting for
Is the peace down in your heart”
God will always remember your prayers”

There’s a serenity, Linden seems to suggest, that comes, after doing all we can do and all we’re supposed to do, from surrender to God’s “better plan” and a trust in God’s loving care that brings peace, even in the darkest of days. This, then, the song suggests, is what prayer is about – not about simply asking God to come and make things better (that’s our immediate inclination, and there’s nothing wrong with that) but getting ourselves to a point of trust in a God who loves, cares and who sees the end from the beginning. Linden’s chorus sums it up:

“I’m calling you Lord, I’m calling you Lord
I’m calling you Lord, Lord, Lord, calling you Lord
I’m waitin’ on you, I’m waitin’ on you
And I can’t do nothin’ till you come”

The last word, we’ll leave to Eric Bibb: I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.

Lonesome Christmas Blues?

How do you like your Christmas songs? Schmalzy soft jazz, White Christmas and all that? Gritty like the Pogues? (please, no!) Or maybe with a tongue firmly in cheek, like the Bare Naked Ladies?

And of course there are the Christmas blues songs. B B King with Merry Christmas Baby; Freddie King’s Christmas Tears; Koko Taylor’s Merry Merry Christmas; Roy Milton’s Christmas Time Blues; Bessie Smith’s At the Christmas Ball Blues; or maybe Joe Bonamassa’s Lonesome Christmas. All on the general theme of – it’s Christmas and my baby done left me / I ain’t got a baby / my baby and me are apart.

But then there’s Victoria Spivey’s Christmas Morning Blues, where she’s lamenting the fact that her man’s in jail; John Lee Hooker’s Blues for Christmas, with the plaintive “I ain’t got a dime;” and Blind Blake’s Lonesome Christmas Blues where he remembers last Christmas when he was in jail, and this Christmas isn’t much better – “I’m sick and I can’t get well.” Tough times don’t stop for Christmas. Just ask the millions living in war torn Syria or Yemen or South Sudan; other those going hungry in East Africa, or the brutalized Rohingya people of Burma. Or even the more than 43m Americans and 14m Britons living in poverty.

Truth is, the world can be a tough place, and none of us are immune from tough times – family problems, health problems, relationship problems. The celebrations of the holiday season don’t make these go away.

It’s hard to find a blues song that taps into the heart of Christmas. And by that I mean hope. G.K. Chesterton, the writer, poet, and philosopher said that “hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” So it was with the first Christmas – a family living under the occupation of a brutal, despotic regime; a new baby, brought into the world in the most humble and poor of circumstances; the birth announced to a bunch of rough, uneducated shepherds; the new family becoming refugees, forced to move to a foreign country. Pretty tough circumstances.

And yet the story is shot through with hope – that change and redemption is possible. That things can be different. That the power of love unleashed into the world through the coming of this baby can ultimately be more powerful than all the tyrants and war-mongers and greed-merchants and liars. That justice and fairness can prevail. Instead of despair at the state the world is in, the Christmas story urges us to take courage – see the possibility of redemption and change for ourselves and begin to make a difference in the world around. Hope in a hopeless world.

Hope. New possibilities. Change. It’s what Bethlehem is all about.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

A Blues Odyssey: Part 2, Memphis

“You boys wanna hear some live blues? Head on over to Red’s, starts about 9 o’clock,” said Roger Stolle when we visited his Cats Head Delta Blues and Folk Art store in Clarksdale. Red Paden’s Juke Joint is arguably the last of the real Mississippi Delta juke joints, set downtown between a weedy graveyard and the eastern bank of the Sunflower River. Sadly, we had to get back to Memphis and had to content ourselves enjoying a spectacular sunset behind us as we drove back on Highway 61, the sky changing colour magnificently from red to magenta to purple.

 

I’d met up with two friends from Texas a few days earlier in Memphis. Bob and Steve and I had met just over a year earlier in Sam’s Burger Joint in San Antonio, where we’d all come to see Sean McConnell and his band. That was a great gig, by the way – if you don’t know Sean McConnell’s upbeat Americana, go check him out. We’d got on well in our chance meeting, and Bob, very hospitably had invited me to his family’s Thanksgiving a few days later. So, after keeping in touch for the next year, here we were to explore Memphis and the blues. The Irish guy showing the Americans the home of the blues.

I woke up in my hotel in Memphis the first morning to glorious blue skies, a great view over the Mississippi River and – what the heck is that? Yes, an enormous pyramid overlooking the river. It turned out to a huge Bass Pro megastore and hotel. Apparently, it’s the 10^th largest pyramid in the world, no kiddin’. Bass Pro, if you don’t know, is a chain of huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ stores all across the US, particularly in the South. On visiting the store, I was astonished at the amount of gear associated with these pursuits, and utterly appalled at the gun section, where available for purchase were every conceivable hand-gun or rifle, including military style semi-automatic weapons. Deeply unsettling.

But Memphis is a great town. Beale Street may have become sanitized and tourist-friendly, but it’s got a lot of great eating establishments with live music every night, including B.B. King’s Blues Club. If you go, check out Blues City Café just across the road for some great bar-b-que ribs. Our best night for music was in Rum Boogie, seeing a band called Young Petty Thieves, who did the most original covers I’ve ever heard along with their own bluesy, Americana music. These guys deserve to be heard more widely.

You’re never short of things to do in Memphis. We had a great visit to the Gibson Guitar Factory, given the tour by the fast-talking and friendly Kyle (whose name, when he said it seemed to have about four syllables). I enjoyed sampling the finished article in the store afterwards, lusting after one of the Gibson Memphis ES-335s we’d seen being made – largely by hand – in the factory. At over four thousand dollars, I decided against an immediate purchase.

Across the road is the outstanding Rock’n Soul Museum which tells the complete story of Memphis music history, as researched by the Smithsonian Institution. And an absolute highlight was our visit to Sun Studio, “the birthplace of Rock’n Roll.” Graham, our host on the tour, was a goldmine of terrific stories about the early history of the Studio, featuring Sam Phillips who discovered Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. It’s a piece of musical history not to be missed. I loved the radio booth exhibit belonging to pioneering disk jockey, Dewey Phillips, whose Red, Hot and Blue show attracted 100,000 listeners in the 1950s and helped launch the career of Elvis Presley. He was reputed to play repeatedly on his show records that he liked, and to lift the needle off records he wasn’t appreciating and to smash them live on air.

Dewey Phillips’s Original Radio Booth

Most moving in Memphis is the National Civil Rights Museum. Set in the Lorraine Motel, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, it is a gripping history of black America from slavery to the Civil Rights movement. The story of the injustice and suffering of this community is pains-takingly told, with exhibits that I found utterly absorbing. We looked at our watches after 3 hours and were surprised at where the time had gone. One story amongst many struck me forcibly – that of six-year-old Ruby Bridges who braved a hateful crowd of protesters in New Orleans, on her first day of attendance at the all-white William Frantz Elementary on November 1960. After she arrived, white parents pulled their children out of school and teachers refused to teach her. The courage of this little girl was remarkable, never crying or whimpering, despite the vile hatred she had to endure, including threats of poisoning.

The tour concludes with you passing by the room MLK was staying in that fateful day in April 1968 and being able to look on to the balcony at the spot where he was slain. Very moving. Across the road is the final part of the Museum’s tour, situated in the building from where his assassin, James Earl Ray, took the shot. You can look across the road from the bathroom window from where he shot, the balcony outside MLK’s room in the Lorraine Motel in full view. We didn’t linger too long over the exhibits detailing the various conspiracy theories that arose after Ray’s conviction, blaming the US government, the Mafia or the Memphis police for King’s death.

We had lunch a few blocks away at Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken, where I was able to sample some authentic Southern cooking – fried okra, sweet potato pie, greens, and gumbo. Pretty tasty. On other occasions I sampled catfish and tamales – “hot tamales and they’re red hot, yes I got ’em for sale.” And, of course, there was the endless offerings of barbeque chicken or pulled pork. Well, I did enjoy all this soul food, but have to admit, after a few days I was longing for a plain cheese sandwich.

Before we left Memphis I was intrigued to visit Schwabs’ 1950s style Soda Fountain on Beale Street. Here you can get phosphate sodas, milkshakes and soda jerks, buy a souvenir tee-shirt and browse toys some of us remember from our childhood in the 50s and 60s – catapults and balsa wood gliders with elastic sprung propellers, Chinese checkers and jacks. It’s a nostalgic walk back into time, definitely worth the visit.

Schwab Soda Fountain, Beale Street

Memphis is a laid-back town where everybody has time for you, and you always feel welcome. A great place from which to launch our visit to the Delta.

[to be continued…]

Prescription Blues

I listened to a great version of a song recorded in 1924 by Clara Smith called Prescription for the Blues recently on the Watkins Family Hour album. It struck a chord, having suffered some ill health recently myself – doctor’s prescriptions have been all too frequently part of life of late!

Of course the song isn’t really about treating physical health – it’s about the blues, what Robert Johnson called “an achin’ old heart disease,” the “worried blues.” W.C. Handy said that the “blues were conceived in aching hearts.” Prescription Blues is a clever, light-hearted, playful little song about being love sick, having a “heart disease” and asking the doctor  for a cure:

All day long I worry all night I’m blue
I feel so awfully lonesome I don’t know what to do
And so I ask you doctor to see if you can find
Something in your sachet to pacify my mind
Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

Let me tell you doctor why I’m in misery
Once I had a lover, but she went away from me
…Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

And that’s what most of the blues are about, isn’t it – lost love, love gone wrong, unfaithful lovers, unrequited love, yearning and heart break. As Son House said, “Ain’t but one kind of blues – and that consisted in male and female that’s in love.”

Well, for sure that’s mainly the subject matter of most blues songs. But there’s more to it than that, and I think this is why the blues continue to resonate for us. The blues arose in black communities a century ago, in the hardship, toil, injustice and bondage of African Americans. B. B. King said, “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation.” And, as well as love, many of the songs address real life problems – not having enough money, illness, homelessness, bereavement, abandonment. You can easily think of songs like Victoria Spivey’s T.B. Blues (“I got a tuberculosis; consumption is killing me, It’s too late, too late…too late”), about a disease that is particularly associated with poverty, or Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Broke and Hungry, or Big Bill Broonzy’s Starvation Blues, where he sings about having no job, no place to stay and “starvation everywhere I go.”

Well, of course, there is a prescription for all this – we don’t have to tolerate injustice, racism, exploitation. They are all problems that can be addressed, if we have the will. The blues can keep on jolting us out of our safe, comfortable lives and alert us to the pain and ills of the world around. Will we be part of the problem or part of the solution? Which starts with the words of someone from a couple of thousand years ago: “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

B B King’s Legacy

The blues world and far beyond is trying to come to terms with the death of B B King, one of the last remaining links with the early days of the blues in Mississippi. King was a towering figure in blues throughout his lifetime and, as we look back on his life, we can see that the contribution he made to not only the blues, but to rock music more generally was enormous. Not bad for a skinny kid from a dirt-poor background in Indianola, Mississippi, raised by his maternal grandmother Elnora Farr, because his father had run off and his was too poor to raise her son.

The honours and awards he garnered were numerous and impressive:

• inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
• inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
• awarded the National Medal of Arts.
• awarded the Kennedy Center Honors, given to recognize “the lifelong accomplishments and extraordinary talents of our nation’s most prestigious artists.”
• awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

He was ranked by TIME magazine No.3 on its list of the 10 best electric guitarists of all time; and no. 6 by Rolling Stone. Any guitarist or blues fan could recognize B B King if they heard just him play just one note, so distinctive was his vibrato, string bending and tone. “BB, anyone could play a thousand notes and never say what you said in one,” tweeted Lenny Kravitz recently. He won numerous Grammys, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.

His collaborations with and mentoring of other blues artists were legion: Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Susan Tedeschi, Bonnie Raitt, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Billy Gibbons, Mark Knopfler, Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd,  Keith Richards and Joe Bonnamassa, all of whom rated him highly as a player and influence. But his musical influence extended far beyond the blues family – we could mention Willie Nelson, John Mayer, Mavis Staples, Sheryl Crow, Tracy Chapman  to name but a few he mentored or played with.

His duet with U2 on When Love Comes to Town is a classic and introduced him to a whole new set of rock fans. His music has been sample by the likes of 50 Cent and Tony Yayo, Ice Cube, Action Bronson, and rapper  O.S.T.R.

B B King’s achievements were more than any one person could reasonably expect in their lifetime – a testimony to his talent, hard work, and positive outlook on life. King contradicted the popular notion that blues music is sad and depressing. Even though he’s singing the blues and the subject matter may be that his baby’s done left him, or the thrill has gone, or his grave needs to be kept clean, in King’s hands the blues work their way through the present troubles with hope that things can get better. As he says in one of his songs, “There must be a better world somewhere.” “Instead of tears,” he sings, “I’ll learn all about laughter.”

There’s a joy that breaks through B B King’s music – as he said, “It’s good for me when I’m feeling bad, and good for me when I’m feeling good.” All the more remarkable, when you consider the trials of King’s life – the poverty of his early background, his failed marriages, difficulties with some of his children, the racial discrimination he had to bear along the way.

As we continue to mourn his passing, we can be grateful for the legacy of music he has left behind in both his recordings and the many musicians he has influenced. He will continue to influence many more.

In Appreciation of: Eric Clapton

Last month, Eric Clapton suggested that his days of touring are over. “The road has become unbearable,” he said. “It’s become unapproachable, because it takes so long to get anywhere. It’s hostile – everywhere: getting in and out of airports, traveling on planes and in cars.”

Understandable, when you’re nearly 70, I guess, but the good news is that it sounds like he doesn’t intend to stop doing studio work or one-off performances. Clapton has been entertaining us and enthralling us with his blues-based guitar work for nearly 50 years. Ranked by Rolling Stone magazine number 2 in their “Greatest Guitarists of All Time” (surpassed only by Jimi Hendrix – fair enough!), Clapton was once hailed “god” by an adoring fanbase. He’s had 17 Grammys, was awarded the CBE by the Queen, and songs like Layla or Tears in Heaven will be enjoyed and played long after Clapton is gone.

But Clapton is essentially a blues artist who has hailed Robert Johnson as the biggest influence on his guitar playing. He said of Johnson, “His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice.” Clapton’s tribute to Johnson, on his 2004 album, Me and Mr. Johnson, is one terrific blues album, with excellent arrangements which really showcase Johnson’s genius and some outstanding playing and singing from Clapton. Clapton had previously said that Robert Johnson’s best songs had “never been covered by anyone else, at least not very successfully — because how are you going to do them?” This album and the follow-up Sessions for Robert really do Johnson’s songs justice.

B B King has said of Clapton, “I admire the man. I think he’s No. 1 in rock ‘n’ roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person.” He credited Clapton, with other British artists, with breathing new life into the blues in the late 1960s. The collaborative album between King and Clapton, Riding with the King, won the 2000 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, and although some felt it was just too polished for a blues album, it is a thoroughly enjoyable record that shows off both men at their very best.

Clapton’s struggles with drugs are well documented, not least in his autobiography, making for painful reading.  “In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn’t commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn’t be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for…they had to practically carry me into the clinic.” In 1987, he checked into Hazeldene Treatment Center in Minnesota for the second and last time, and recounts how, after a month there, just going through the motions, he had a quite profound experience.

He says, “At that moment, almost of their own accord, my legs gave way and I fell to my knees. In the privacy of my room I begged for help. I had no notion of who I was talking to, I just knew that I had come to the end of my tether…I knew that on my own, I wasn’t going to make it, so I asked for help and, getting down on my knees, I surrendered.”

He goes on to say, “From that day until this, I have never failed to pray in the morning, on my knees, asking for help, and at night, to express gratitude for my life and most of all, for my sobriety. I choose to kneel because I feel I need to humble myself when I pray…If you were to ask why I do all this, I will tell you…because it works, as simple as that.”

Clapton’s been sober for nearly thirty years, and worked with a number of addiction treatment organizations before establishing the Crossroads Centre in Antigua in 1998 which helps people recover from the devastating effects of addictions to drugs and alcohol. Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, which has featured a who’s who of top guitar talent in on four occasions since 2004, raises funds for this centre.

I saw Clapton play on a couple of occasions, most notably in the tour which supported the Robert Johnson album.  He didn’t engage with the audience much, but it was enough to be treated to a lengthy set of blues songs and classic Clapton numbers and to admire his fret-work on the big screen – the video-team clearly knew their audience, spending the majority of time on Eric’s guitar playing as opposed to shots of the band as a whole. It was a great night’s entertainment. If he’s decided to retire at this stage, then – thanks for your massive contribution to music and the blues and thanks for the memories.

But for the immediate future, we all can look forward to The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale, in tribute to JJ Cale who died last year, which will be released at the end of 29 July 2014. It features 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Christine Lakeland, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Derek Trucks.

B.B. King and the roots of the blues

At the beginning of April, blues legend B.B. King had what his publicists called “a bad night.” Now 88, B.B. and his band had driven 1,600 miles to the show in St. Louis, Missouri, and on top of the rigors of travel, King missed taking his diabetes medicine, resulting in elevated blood sugar. The result was, by all accounts a rather shaky performance, to say the least, with King rambling on at length and playing only a couple of complete songs. After 15 minutes of “You Are My Sunshine,” part of the audience booed loudly and yelled for some real music, while other left. Eventually the show came to an untimely end.

There has been quite a lot of comment about what many felt was the fans’ disrespectful behaviour towards a man, who, after all, is a living link to the very earliest days of the blues in the Mississippi Delta and who has given audiences and record-buyers huge enjoyment for over half a century. I can see it both ways, though. Yes, there’s a sense in which just getting to sit in the room with the man is enough – I saw him play in Paris a couple of years ago and that was pretty much my attitude. (See my earlier post on this). Yes, we did get “You Are My Sunshine” and some flirting with women in the first few rows and the characteristic B.B. King guitar licks were a little thin on the ground. But just to be there, to hear him sing and play “The Thrill is Gone,” with that sweet vibrato on Lucille, was good enough for me.

But, on the other hand, the audience in St. Louis, who had spent their hard-earned money on tickets and travel, didn’t even get as much as that by all accounts, so one can understand their frustration. But afterwards King apologized for what had happened and said he humbly asks for the understanding of his fans.” I’m sure King and those around him will make sure there’s not a repeat of what happened.

We all want to remember B.B. King as the legend he is. King is typically quite deprecating about his guitar skills – but ask any guitarist and they’ll tell you that they can tell it’s B.B. King playing after one note. That takes a deep appreciation for the music and for the blues. Growing up in rural Mississippi in poverty in the 1920s and 30s, King has lived the blues, witnessing lynchings and experiencing first hand the hardship of the Jim Crow South. “I’ve put up with more humiliation than I care to remember,” says King. His song, That’s Why I Sing the Blues, recalls his people being brought to America on slave ships, living in the “ghetto” with vermin for company, being excluded from educational opportunities, having a poor diet and being subject to unjust harassment from the police.

“Guess you’re born to lose

Everybody around me, people,

It seems like everybody got the blues.”

B.B. King reminds us of the roots of the blues – he takes us back to the source. That’s why we respect him so much; that’s why we want him to be around for a long time to come; that’s why people will continue to go to his shows as long as he chooses to play. But at the same time, we want to remember him as a great artist, and there’ll come a time, maybe pretty soon, when those around him might need to persuade the great man to call it a day. Whatever happens, the good news is that we still have his recordings to keep us in mind of what a great guitarist, singer and performer B.B. King has been all his life.