[Harp-L] Re: The Blues Life

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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