by John Merchant
I suppose anyone has the right to sing the blues. However, whether the rendition has the ring of authenticity or not depends very much on the age of the singer and the life they have led. It’s hard to imagine that a sixteen-year-old youth who has just been dumped by his girlfriend could write or sing a convincing “She done me wrong” number. Elvis Presley’s blues never did carry any conviction for me.
To be a really good blues singer you have to have experienced hurt and longing, poverty, deprivation and abuse, and it helps if you’re black. Very few white people can sing the blues, except perhaps the Englishman, Eric Clapton, and I guess he’s earned the right from what I know of his life. I suppose the closest that white people come to singing the blues is Country and Western, but most of Nashville’s sentiment comes from the wallet, not the heart.
Probably the best contemporary performers are the black guitar players B.B. King and Buddy Guy, who bring to the genre a dash of wry humor so necessary to strike the right balance between suffering and self-pity. King came from humble circumstances but has remained philosophical about his success. “I felt that this was what I wanted to do, to make a living playing the guitar,” he recollected in an interview for Ebony magazine. “My father was born on the plantation, I was born on the plantation. I wanted more for my children. This guitar was my way out.”
My own maternal grandfather suffered mightily during his life from callous employers and industrial disease, but not once did he descend into self-pity, and when he related his hard luck stories, and ranted against the industrialists he worked for, there was always a twinkle in his eye, though he couldn’t sing or play the guitar, more’s the pity.
No matter how accomplished contemporary blues singers are, they still lack the edge their forbears brought to the art. Old, scratchy recordings that exist only because archivists tracked down the original performers and captured their songs on tape for the National Archives in Washington, D.C., demonstrate the true essence of the Blues.
The recordings preserved the fragile history of the Blues for all of us, which is just as well because the performers were often by that time sick and failing, or in jail. Only in the singing of artists such as Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and dozens of others of that era who contributed to this rich heritage, can one hear the heartache, and somehow acceptance of their lot.
As to whether I consider myself qualified to sing the blues, the answer is an unequivocal no. I’ve been done wrong, and had my fair share of setbacks, but my life has been a bed of roses compared to people who could really do justice to the blues. I could even sing a blues song if I had drunk enough gin, or you held a gun to my head, but it would convince no one, and believe me, I’m not complaining.
© John Merchant 2009
This entry was posted by John Merchant on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Theme of the Month.
You can be notified of any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a comment in the box at the bottom of the post.
Print This Post
After you click the print button, a new page will appear.
Click the link at the bottom right of the page to print it.