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.

 

Playing the blues is like having to be black twice – B.B. King

What’s the relationship between the spirituals and the blues? James H. Cone, black liberation theologian and Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, in his 1972 book, The Spirituals and the Blues, says that both the spirituals and the blues are essentially about the struggle for black survival. He traces the spirituals to ante-bellum slavery in the Southern States in the dehumanizing and brutal experience of the African American community, and says that they were a means of black people “affirming that divine reality which lets you know that you are a human being – no matter what white people say.”

For Cone, “the basic idea of the spirituals is that slavery contradicts God.” They were a means of resisting the white gospel which emphazised the obedience of slaves to their masters. In the Oscar-winning, film 12 Years A Slave, there are two rather chilling scenes where white masters are seen reading the Bible to their assembled black “property,” the one with plantation-owner Epps reading about slaves obeying their masters from the New Testament, being particularly poignant. Cone suggests that songs favoured by black slaves were particularly those that recounted Old Testament stories such as Moses and the Exodus and Daniel and his friends as captives in Babylon. Clearly these stories of deliverance by God of those who are oppressed resonated strongly with a people in bondage, who looked and yearned for a day of freedom.

Cone makes the point that it would be simplistic to see these songs which celebrated passing through the waters of “Jordan” and going to the “promised land” as simply looking in desperation for relief from present sufferings beyond the grave. Such songs often had a double meaning: beyond “spiritual freedom” was “an eschatological freedom grounded in the events of the historical present, affirming that even now God’s future is inconsistent with the realities of slavery.”

Cone traces the roots of the blues to the spirituals, which both lamented black suffering and held out a hope of deliverance. The blues, he says, “are about black life and the sheer earth and gut capacity to survive in an extreme situation of oppression.” As such, the spirituals and the blues “flow from the same bedrock of experience” – the blues are, he says, “secular spirituals.”

Of course, as has often been pointed out, most blues songs are about love, sex and relationships. Son House said the blues were about what happened between a man and a woman. There has, of course, been a steady stream of blues songs which explicitly referred to the evils of the Jim Crow era and have sounded a note of protest – Leadbelly, Josh White, Big Bill Broonzy are prime examples of artists who raised their voices against the social situation in the South. But the blues rise from, and reflect, the context of the oppression of blacks, no matter what their explicit subject matter. They were a means of black people affirming their existence and an expression of their refusal to be destroyed by an oppressive environment. They are, in the words of Charlie Patton, a “Mean Black Moan.” Cone says simply, “the blues is black.”

Does that mean that white people can’t sing the blues? Of course it doesn’t – there is something about the blues that can get under anybody’s skin not matter what color, and something in the words, the music and the whole feeling of the blues that has universal appeal. As Willie Dixon said, “the blues are the true facts of life expressed in song, inspiration, feeling and understanding.” Audiences around the world for the blues are now, probably, predominantly white. And there are many great white blues artists who have a great appreciation for the music and the history. B. B. King said once that “playing the blues is like having to be black twice.” But he went on to say that “Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.”

But we can never forget that the blues are deeply rooted in the black experience of oppression and violence in the first half of the twentieth century. As Jimi Hendrix said, “Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.” Ain’t that the truth?

The world waits for the hope-tellers among us

You might well be forgiven for asking what the blues have got to do with Christmas. For many of us, Christmas is about having a good time, partying, too much to eat and drink. We’re not sure what we’re celebrating, but hey, it’s the middle of winter and we could do with a few parties! For those of us who see Christmas as all about the coming of God to us in the form of a baby, it’s a time of great joy and celebration. The world turned decisively on that day in Bethlehem in the first century, and the possibility of a new way of being human and a hope for a better and just world was born. That’s not the blues – that’s joy, laughter, hope and love.

But the blues are a continual reminder of the sorrow, pain and injustice of the world. B. B. King said “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation”. One of his songs is That’s why I sing the blues which reminds us of the roots of the blues in the injustice suffered by African Americans from the seventeenth century onwards in America – from slave ships to life in the ghetto, to the unfairness of the criminal justice system to a myriad of “troubles”.

In his recent album, The Candy Store  Kid, Ian Siegal sings Lightni’ Malcom’s song: “So much trouble in the world today, so much trouble”. It reminds me, too, of Dylan’s 1993 song, World Gone Wrong.

The blues are a window into the experience of all manner of injustice and suffering in the world. As if we needed any reminder – we remember the unspeakable anguish which visited the community of Newtown, Connecticut, just a year ago. It’s hard to comprehend the depth of evil that has assailed these families and the extent of their suffering. In the year since, around 33,000 people in the United States have died as a result of gun violence.

Further from our doorsteps, Syrian women, children and men are living rough, cold and hungry in camps on either side of the Turkish border and in the Lebanon as a result of the civil war engulfing that nation. Scores of small children in Pakistan have been killed over the past few years by US drone bombing – we note with horror the statement by Time’s Joe Klein, as he tried to defend this, “the bottom line in the end is whose four-year old gets killed.” As is always the case in armed conflicts, it’s the innocent who suffer the most. Around 60 armed conflicts between nations in the world this year, including many throughout the continent of Africa and in the Middle East, have left thousands dead and many, many more in the direst of straits.

The word of the angels to the shepherds in Bethlehem was “Do not fear”. The word of gun-toting violence is “Be very afraid” – be afraid for your life, your food, your home, your future. Walter Bruggemann says, “The world waits for hope-filled truth…while we wait in the abyss, newness does not seem possible. But hope breaks fate. Hope for newness cracks open what seemed to be true in perpetuity. The world waits for the hope-tellers among us.”

That hope is possible because of the Christmas story – into the lives of the poor, ragged shepherds, huddled on a Palestinian hillside, broke a dazzling heavenly choir, singing about a new day of peace coming to the earth, somehow all bound up within the swaddling cloths of a new born baby in the local town. Into the bleakness breaks hope, and because of that hope, joy breaks forth. Things are changing, we find out, as we read the Christmas story – the arrogant are going to be routed, despots thrown down, the hungry filled with good things and the rich sent away empty handed. In the birth of this baby lie the seeds for changing the world, for bringing peace and setting things right.

If we let it, we can ourselves be caught up in this story – becoming hope-tellers and hope-bringers as we pursue the way of peace. That way is costly, however. The announcement to the shepherds was “peace on earth” and the coming of Jesus was meant to “guide our way into the way of peace” (Luke 1.79). This theme of peace is at the heart of the New Testament, actually – God is the “God of peace.”

It’s a big ask, though, particularly for people like us who comfortably inhabit the story of “a global market economy supported by an undisciplined militarism in the service of a limitless consumer entitlement” (Brueggemann). But the peace and the hope the world craves for will only come through those who, in the name of the Prince of Peace, are prepared to break with the gospel of greed and practice love, generosity, hospitality and forgiveness. And who will be those who seek to broker peace, to pursue peace, to bring peace.

Eric Bibb – We’ve Got to Do Better

Billy Collins “The Blues”: noticing the pain of others

Billy Collins

Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States (2001 to 2003) is a Distinguished Professor at colleges in New York and Florida. The New York Times has called him “the most popular poet in America”, with his poetry books selling far beyond most volumes of poetry. His poem, The Blues, laced with humor, captures the essence of the blues. Here it is:

Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn’t even stop to say good-bye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent, and beseeching key,

people will not only listen,
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation

by that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you’re a hard-hearted man
but that woman’s sure going to make you cry.

Brilliant, isn’t it? I love the first couple of verses in particular, which point to the repeated first line of the typical blues verse. Take Robert Johnson’s Kind-Hearted Woman Blues, for example: “I love my baby, my baby she don’t love me” – repeated before the resolution of the verse “Really love that woman, can’t stand to leave her be.” Collins suggests that such is the disinterest in other’s pain, that the line needs to be repeated twice.

The point is made with good humor, but the “no one takes an immediate interest in the pain of others” strikes home. Too often we’re too caught up in our own worlds of self-interest, or maybe just the busyness of everyday life to be too worried about the pain of those around us. The blues always have been and always will be a stark reminder of the pain and suffering in the world – it may be at the level of the personal relationship where “your baby left you early this morning” or at the level of injustice in the world (B B King’s That’s Why I Sing the Blues catalogues the injustice suffered by his own community – “It seems like everybody got the blues”).

It’s approaching Christmas – the story of which concerns a child born in such poverty  the parents had to lay him in the feeding trough of the animals. And yet it’s a season that seems to invite the worst of excess in terms of eating, drinking and shopping. It gets difficult to take an immediate interest in the pain of others in the midst of a table groaning with food and expensive gifts. But the Christmas story, like the twice sung blues line, calls our attention to something beyond ourselves and our own interests. To the pain of the world, the injustice of the way things are, and to the child in the feeding trough, through whom God was entering in to the poverty, the squalor and messiness of human life to bring redemption  – a story that all of us are called to participate in as we turn from self-absorption to hear the insistent cry of injustice all around us.

Keb Mo with Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman Blues