There was always going to be The Blues. Even if I was white, in a city with no delta...a few rivers...but no delta. I never sat on a decaying porch but our council house and the district we lived in was pretty rough. Even if I was born half way through what was arguably one of the most affluent centuries, for us white folks, that the world has ever seen, we didn’t see a great deal of that affluence. You may disagree, thinking globally.
But I heard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and others….before I heard Jimi Hendrix. And it was those guys who made my pre-teenage hair stand on end…not The Beatles and The Rolling Stones so much…at least not until that stuff was all you could hear. There were many guitar bands way back then, many of which are well worth remembering like The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Who and others and although each and every one of them could produce the singles and hits required of them from time to time…they were not and did not pretend to be any of the aforementioned Bluesmen. Only later when Led Zeppelin appeared did we have to put up with such pretensions.
England’s green and pleasant land has produced, arguably some of the best Bluesmen in the world starting with all those who graduated from The Bluesbreakers and John Mayall himself…
Of course, from across the ocean we got Jimi Hendrix and the awesome Stevie Ray Vaughan…
So The Blues was always going to be. From Africa to America to England and back again. The Blues was not just for "men" and the title of this blogg is ironic, The Blues and its history is filled with women like Billy Holiday, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Lucinda Williams....but I'll rest for a few bars...
