[Harp-L] Re: The Blues Life



Steve Power wrote:
Many years ago word got around that Cal was in hospital having been stabbed repeatedly by an irate husband who had caught him in bed with his wife. ... "Cal you got to stop living those songs."

That's a hell of a good story.


But it brings up the thought of the blues life that Howlin' Wolf led. Having started from below zero, poorest of the poor, he handled himself in adulthood as a responsible middle class entertainer. He saved his money and was proud to let people know that he drove up from the Delta in a car he owned outright, and with $5000 in his pocket.

He bought a house in a middle class neighborhood, was highly reliable about showing up for gigs and making sure his band did, too, took extension classes in other forms of music, and in harmony, left his family well-off. There's a wonderful performance film of Wolf where he takes time in the middle to heap scorn on Son House, who was in the room, for the life he led and where it landed him.

I fully realize that Steve was in no way advocating 'the blues life', that the story in fact places the idea of living such a life in its well-deserved context as something to be avoided.

And while many of the great blues men did indeed live lives of alcoholism, violence and irresponsibility, Howlin' Wolf - at the very pinnacle of the blues - showed that none of these things was necessary behavior for being a good blues musician.

When I was a kid musician lots of the young players thought you had to drink and act like a fool in order to 'live the blues.' I do not see that kind of attitude much on Harp-l, thank goodness.

But if any of you younger players have to work with people who think that being a blues musician requires you to live a life of dissolution, let them know about the Wolf and the exemplary way he led his life.

K




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