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

[Abner <cdgaldos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Buck this was one great story. Thanks for Sharing. 
It seems in life if you don't act the part your not part of the crowd. This is just peer pressure at it's best. 
This is a great site with wonderful harpers. In lucky in so many was to have stumble on it. 

Thank

Abner GaldÃs
The Puerto Rican Bluesman. 




On Sep 2, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Buck Worley <boogalloo@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> 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
>> 
>