Blues: Inside, Got to Come Out

Shown here: Howlin Wolf --

First thing, got to get this off my chest: I’m glad I don’t have the blues. I’m so glad. I’m

so glad. I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad. When an elderly Muddy Waters exhorted a mostly White college student audience in Madison, Wisconsin (circa 1975) “Can you feel it?”, everyone cried out “yes!”. Maybe they did. Who am I to judge? But why did the African American listening public back off from the blues while White American youth embraced it at that time? Because the blues were old-fashioned for the former, and top-of-the-charts in the hands of young British and (later) American bands for the latter. Of course, that’s a whole lesson in American sociology and a historic musical diversion that has been explored in previous iterations of Al compas del mundo, i.e. programa #140, “British blues”. But today were dealing with today and everything is in retrospect. So these guys, the likes of Honey Boy Edwards, Ed Bell, Robert Johnson, etc., are yanking us back to the Jim Crow era, the Great Migration, the British invasion, the incredibly rare jukebox in Chicago’s South Side that carried some of these tunes, and the streaming station that today scratches those idiosyncratic itches for fanáticos (español for “fans”) of the blues. How the musical musings and declarations of our elders from 70+ years ago (Muddy was already a “revival” act by 1975) can sound relevant today, I’ll leave for the anthropologists amongst us to discern. All I know for certain, is that as a teenage Midwesterner in the1960-70s, John Lee Hooker’s wisdom was spot on: “If the impulse is in you, it’s got to come out.”

As an aside, I happened into a second-hand store here in San Francisco today and worked my way through a hundred or so LPs for sale. Amidst all the crappy country recordings, Christmas music and Ray Coniff, there was “Bobby Bland’s Greatest Hits’! Of course, I already had that album.

programa #187, 7-3-25 – Blues: Inside, Got to Come Out

01 Honey Boy Edwards - Drop Down Mama

02 Sonny Boy Williamson - Bring It on Home

03 Robert Johnson - They're Red Hot

04 Ed Bell - Squabblin' Blues

05 Henry Gray - I Declare That Ain't Right

06 Jimmy Reed - Ain't That Lovin' You Baby

07 Muddy Waters - I Be's Troubled

08 Howling Wolf - Break of Day

10 Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers - Wild About You, Baby

11 Little Walter - I Got to Find My Baby

12 John Lee Hooker - I Rolled and Turned and Cried the Whole Night Long

13 J.B. Huttto and the Hawks - Mistake in Life

14 Baby Face Leroy Foster - Locket Out Boogie

15 Elmore James - Fine Little Mama

16 Eddie Boyd - Come on Home

17 Buddy Guy - She Suits Me to a Tee

18 Big Joe Turner - Cherry Red

19 Bobby Bland - Driftin' Blues

20 Ray Charles - Kiss Me Baby

Comments

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