Part Two: the blues

So, as described in the last post, Bob Dylan likes my blog. Apparently, according to my dream, I wrote a great blog about blues music. Great enough for Bob Dylan to declare that I get the blues. Sooo... I'll try to make that dream post come to life.

... This is tough actually.... How do you explain the blues?

Listening to good, and I mean GOOD blues, I think, is a musical representation of what it's like to watch the sun go down in Mississippi over the river. Its notes smell like exhaust from old trucks and cigarettes from juke joints. If you close your eyes and listen to Robert Johnson or Blind Willie Johnson or Bessie Smith sing blues or gospel, it's... damn this is hard... it's like feeling your bare feet glide over a dusty, unvarnished, hard wood floor on a hot day.

Does this make sense? I'll try harder.


Let me explain. I didn't know music beyond a few tracks on "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou," until I moved to Mississippi. And, like everything else about Mississippi, this music changed my life. It was the first time I ever moved away from home, experienced anything outside Nebraska. And then I heard music. Real music. And it wasn't from a mix, or a link or a PBS video. I discovered it on my own, which is unusual. And I went to B.B. King's juke joint. And the town where Tommy (not Robert) Johnson sold his soul to the devil. And it was hot. And it was humid. And some parts of Mississippi were backwards. But I believed in it. Almost like religion.

Blues music pumps through your veins. You can feel it in your body like you can feel heartache or yearning. These voices will never get on American Idol; It's kind of like (apologies for all the similes) Lynda Barry, Abby's favorite comic book artist taught me. While it's not classically trained or even "correct" sometimes, it's a part of you. And it's in giving a part of you to the world that art is created. That is the blues. One person and his or her guitar, giving a part of himself to me and me experiencing it.

Now, I remember in the dream me listing songs. Because Bob Dylan offered to play "Church I'm Fully Saved Today," because I wrote about it in my blog. I woke thinking, "That's not blues, that's gospel." But it's the same to me, especially when blues singers do it.

So here's a few of my favorites:

1. "Church I'm fully saved today." as sung by Blind Willie Johnson. His voice makes me believe in something. He makes me want to believe in God even when I find it difficult. He makes me think of a small Baptist black church off a dusty road in a cotton field. And I want so badly to transport there and inhale the fervor and fire from the choir. The the song ends and I feel abandoned. What other kind of music can do that?

2. "Shake Sugaree" I don't know if this is blues or comedy or folk or what. But Elizabeth Cotton, Pete Seeger's nanny, sings this song like an angel. All of her other music is gruff and rough, and great. But this track is different. She is smooth, and melodic and I can't read her emotion. And there is nothing out there like it, like, Steve Buscemi said in "Ghost World," about the song "Devil Got My Woman."

3. "Devil Got my Woman" I heard this before I really knew what blues was, thanks to that movie, and I was on board. The scene where Enid just sits in her room, listening to the record, moving the needle back to the beginning every time it finishes. I get that. For me it was when I first got Canned Heat's "Sweet Sixteen" and "Bullfrog Blues."

4. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" by Leadbelly. Abby gave me this track on a Christmas mix when I was 15. I played it out. It was a blues and folk mix. I memorized it. Probably one of the best gifts I ever had. She gave me a less popular version of his song. It's slower. More meloncholy than the popular version. It was originally titled "Black Girl," but when the lyric was changed to "My Girl," to make it more popular, it got it's new name. If you close your eyes and listen to his voice on the original version*** (which I can't find online), you can hear regret and dispair. You can tell he is going to forgive his woman and he knows she is going to do it again. And again. It's like finding out about love and loss without ever experiencing it.

Well, I guess that's it. If Bob Dylan is reading this, and if you dig it, you owe me a phone call. Well, actually you owe me some sort of celestial shout out. I'll be waiting. And I'll see you in my dreams.

*** In iTunes, under podcasts, search for the Black Media Archive. The original version is there for free.