RE: [Harp-L] Re: The Blues Life

[Buck Worley <boogalloo@xxxxxxx>]

Howlin Wolf talkin about the blues
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUVZtGdFMMc
 

> Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:13:38 -0700
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> From: kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [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
>