“I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues”
– B.B. King
At some point along the way, it was said that “the blues ain’t nothin but a good man feelin’ bad” To me, listening to the blues is much like swimming in the Mississippi swap. One can spend forever in the dark, dirty water perfectly content and unaware. That is until the moment you feel the tickle of a catfish whisker on your leg, and you turn to notice a few pair of reptilian eyes watching you so intently you’d swear the Government put them up to it. Whether you keep yourself together or lose it a bit, there is no denying from that instant onward, your dips in the swamp are changed permanently. For you’ve caught a glimpse of an other-world, a parallel realm of sorts that is covered like a blanket by the dark, murky Mississippi water. And I’d venture to say the blues plunges you in that same mental space. Imagine, you pull up some tunes and for hours you’re cruising through an ocean of dreamy, feel-good music without really a care. Then a deep, dark blues classic from the likes of Blind Willie Johnson sneaks up, bumps into your conscious and suddenly you’re deep in the mangroves of the music-verse, no longer gliding along but instead soaked in heavy and historic emotion. An experience of this sort is enough to change your perspective on some things, to bring about questions that perhaps never came to mind to ask. And with questions is precisely the way I’d like to start this post. Namely, what gives the blues its lasting power, and how can a genre of music seek up and hit you like a ton of bricks, carrying within it the potential to change they way you listen to all sorts of music?
To answer these questions, we’ll look at a musician who came about in the adolescent years of the blues, someone I see as illustrative of many aspects of the genres’ development. However, we must practice due diligence and cover some crucial points in history. And as a disclaimer, there are more complete articles of the blues that span a greater width of history. A report of that nature is beyond my scope here, but I encourage anyone interested to do their own discovering. I can assure you it’s effort well spent. Now, it should not be a surprise that the history of the blues is inexorably linked with slavery and racial oppression. Ethnomusicologists cite slave ships and the initial journey of captured Africans to North America as crucial in molding the blues into a unique music form. Africans were forced to sing and dance in captive transport as a way to maintain health. In these conditions, slaves performed traditional chants, although without the accompaniment of instruments. It’s in this fashion that the blues acquired its strong, central vocal component. However this is not to say that instruments remained absent for very long. Historical records point to slaves performing with instruments like fiddles and banjos in 1690 and perhaps earlier. The banjo, seen by many as an American creation deeply linked with Country or Hillbilly heritage, was developed by slaves in parallel with the Blues. Historians consider it to be the first accompanying instrument of this new, American musical style. This consideration came after the discovery of a Sengalese instrument of similar shape, stringing, and picking style (named the Halam) which more than likely served as the model for the banjo. Beyond instruments, other African and even Arabian influences were introduced to Western music via African slaves. Call-and-response lyrics, melisma (moving a syllable of a lyric between different notes that has turned into an emblematic part of pop music), non-lyrical sounds like shouts and growls, and even the mentality of working with music in the background all tie back in some way to the murky, mysterious Arab-African forefathers that birthed the blues. And after 400 years of coexistence in the West, its fair to say these extra-cultural influences have incorporated themselves completely into our modern musical identity. Trying to imagine folk music without the banjo, or a pop concert without a call-and-response bit from tens of thousands of screaming is a good exercise in understanding the profound roots modern American music has the genre it should proudly call its own.
Poor documentation makes it quite difficult to know with any certainty the true progression of the blues’ development. The legitimate story will forever remain obscure, and we’ll get into the impact of this a bit later on. Yet, the crucible of the Civil War and Reformation left clear and unmistakable scars. While there did exist some notable Pre-Civil war signs of black culture mixing with white-dominated US culture (see Richard Allen Hymn Book in 1801 and the rise of African American spirituals in 1780), any newfound sense of freedom brought by the victories of the Civil War quickly vanished in the decades following. The Reformation, which spanned the roughly five decades between the Civil War and World War I, is considered by many the maximum of racial oppression in our country’s history. With this cold fact in mind, suffering, inequality, and privation naturally became extremely visceral realities of black life in North America. The blues served as an important catharsis for such harshness, and flourished as a musical ablution for all blacks during such hostile times. To give some perspective on the racial climate in the latter half of 19th century North America, let’s look at what was popular in American entertainment in those days. Minstrel shows, as they were called, started in Virginia in the 1830’s and quickly became the dominant entertainment throughout the country. Sadly, there is no other way to describe minstrel shows as theatrical performances specifically designed to ridicule blacks and black culture. Consistently portrayed as lazy, dim-witted, and foolish, blacks, in both pre and post Civil-War eras, were represented through a series of recurring characters (one who went by the name Jim Crow in fact). The use of black face was ubiquitous, as was the plagiarism of negro spirituals (essentially the grandfather of gospel) by white artists. And if you are thinking, ‘but oh, that was just kind of a weird, awkwardly-racist conversation with relatives at Thanksgiving dinner’ type of thing, think again. Minstrel shows remained a huge entertainment draw until they were superseded by Vaudeville comedies (which themselves were formed in parallel with black-influenced Ragtime music) in the first decades of the 20th century, and were foundational to the development of the US recording industry as a whole.
As cringe worthy as this may be to hear with our 21st century ears, this is our history and it is one that should be remembered. For in us burying this rather ugly blemish, we lose sight of some silver linings that came with it. Firstly, these shows were, for many Americans in the Northern states, their first and perhaps only exposure to black culture. Of course, white actors in black face did a poor job of accurately representing black ideas and values. However, the essence of the blues came across and reached audiences in one way or another. To such an extent that a good majority of popular music from pre Civil War onwards has grown out of the same terra preta from which the blues sprouted. Evidence of this is overwhelming, and can be seen in any decade, from juke joints to jazz lounges to piano bars to modern R&B clubs. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, many black musicians were allowed for the first time in our history a space in the larger culture to play and create music (as minstrel grew in popularity, black musicians were employed to play the soundtrack of these theatrical shows). Although minstrels were far from a black musician’s dream venue, a few wilful souls took the opportunity to accompany these antiquated, prejudiced spectacles, and use them as a means to pioneer a truly revolutionary new style of music. One that was, at its heart, uniquely American.
“The blues. It’s probably the most important thing that America has ever given to the world.”
– Keith Richards
Touching back quickly to the questions I proposed earlier, I think that vestiges of the Post-Colonial racial atmosphere must account for the force with which blues music genre knocks into our modern conscious. To better understand my thoughts of how racial implications factor in here, let’s look at it this way: any cast iron pan worth using has the bits of a thousand meals cooked into its surface. The whole ethos of a cast iron pan centers on this fact. So in this metaphor, our cast iron pan is representative of blues music, and the day-to-day tribulations of black life in North America serve as our onions, peppers and garlic. All good so far, but there’s another key player that drives this equation, which is the stove. Only through actual cooking does a cast iron develop its “seasoning”. And in our metaphor, that which serves as the stove is the racially-charged, super-heated social atmosphere that existed for centuries. It wasn’t just the blatant instances of oppression, but also the increasingly unified and morally motivated resistance that opposed such unethical behavior that contributed significantly to the fractious social environment. With all that said, I’d argue that the blues put this legacy of racism and segregation, and the lengthy struggle to end it, front and center. In such a way that listeners feel its gravity whether they choose to or not.
By early 20th century the prospects of making a career as a black blues musician went from unthinkable to reality. The first blues lyrics ever recorded come from this era (1903 to be exact). W.C. Handy, already making a living as a musician, noticed the money to be made at blues shows and decided to try his hand in the craft. By all accounts he made a success of himself. (along with the first recorded lyrics, he is also credited with popularizing the 12 bar blues style). As expected, the lyrics he penned dealt with the familiar topics of pain, pity, and perseverance. While these are familiar subjects to any music listener of the last several decades, I find it fascinating that they have remained in the musical vernacular for more than a century. It’s as if there’s no way to stop these emotions from being felt, transformed, and then shared with anyone feeling the same. Any effort to silence the grievances of romantic relationships, debilitation drinking, suffocating small-town life, and the all-too-frequent inequality of justice ends up as fuel that feeds the fire. To me, this curious improbability again speaks to the omnipotent emotive force disguised within the blues. It’s as if something sentient is wanting to communicate with its listeners.
With some rough historical markers laid out, we are now standing at the beginning of the 20th century and already the effects of the blues on the American identity are apparent. But why were the ramifications so wide-felt? How could a music genre borne from a foreign heritage have turned red white and blue blooded so quickly? Why is it the case that music of blacks became popular with high and middle class whites who oppressed them? To get a better grasp on all this, we turn next to the music industry at the turn of the 20th century. As aforementioned, the infancy of the American music industry was centered exclusively on the tastes of white northern males. However, with contiguous growth in blues, jazz and gospel, we arrive in 1900 looking at an evolving musical landscape. Most importantly, phonographs dropped steadily in price. The door suddenly was opened for a new and substantial part of America to enter the music market. And with no clear contender to dominate it as Minstrel shows slowly fell out of favor, a few, freshly-formed record labels decided to experiment a little. Thus was started the musical epoch of “race records”. In 1920, OKeh Records gave a contract to black Vaudeville Comedy singer Mamie Smith. At the time, such an endeavor was a first both for blacks and for the record industry. One has to keep in mind that the economic potential of black music remained an untested hypothesis, even in spite of high demand for blues, jazz and ragtime in both Northern and Southern states. As the story goes, Mamie Smith’s performance was a smashing success, selling 75,000 copies in one month, But it did come with one caveat. Unlike other popular records of the time, Smith’s “Crazy Blues” sold equally well to both whites and blacks alike. As trivial as one 78 mm record from 1920 may seem to us today, this truly marks a significant point in the telling of our country’s musical and entertainment past. For it signifies that black music has officially entered the commercial entertainment market, and with that the US music industry as we know it today starts to take shape.
I’m guessing that race records are an unknown part of history for many readers, as they were for me before researching the blues historical roots’. The brazen use of ‘race’ is a little shocking I will admit, but it is important, again, to recognize the context of the moment. The border between the 19th and 20th centuries was a hotbed of post-war hostility, and a mass migration of blacks to urban centers assure race as the principle topic of social discourse. So what exactly were race records then? Basically, any record of a black artist recorded from 1920 to WW II was released as a race record. With the target audience being blacks, these records were consistently priced lower than other records. Whether the capitalistic mindset was behind this price difference, or it was a pre meditated devaluation of black culture remains a contentious issue. In spite of this modern ideological debate, race records prevailed. Harry Pace, founder of Black Swan Records, saw race records as paramount to the wide-spread recognition and acceptance of black culture. As a black man himself, Pace sought to produce records within the typical “black” genres, but also recorded theater and classic orchestral works by black artist. To him, the world of music and entertainment yielded to blacks a dignified way to live, and thus he was in full support of race records and the opportunities they brought. If you are wondering what happened to race records, know that we have been in their presence all the while. Shortly before the 50’s, Billboard Magazine, which published the original “race records” chart, changed the chart name to “Rhythm and Blues” also known by its more popular moniker “R&B”.
Let’s revisit a few quick points before we turn our focus to a particular region of the expansive blues landscape. First, the blues, while American in their creation, cannot be separated from their African roots. Next, injustice and racism were the prime molding forces of the blues starting from the 17th century, and these realities are simply unavoidable. Thirdly, from blues rose other iconic American music genres, namely jazz when the blues arrived in New Orleans in the 1840’s. And perhaps most importantly for us, by 1920, blues music was beginning to spread across all of the US thanks in large part to the expanding recording industry. But who exactly was responsible for creating this style of record, and from where were the artists making these first race records? Here we turn to a place known as The Piedmont region. This vast geographic swath of the Southeastern United States includes Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia, and was the crossroads between the old school blues we’ve discussed and the new music and entertainment scene of the interwar period. Despite being the home of several prominent cities, Atlanta, Georgia was certainly one of the best places to be as a black musician in the Piedmont region. At the turn of the 20th century, Atlanta was not only developing as a major US city, but was also the primary economic and political hub of the Piedmont. The region as a whole saw a sizeable migration of blacks from traditional agro-centric towns to larger cities shortly after the Civil War. Naturally then, the blues presence in Atlanta was strong. So much so that OKeh Records took another chance and made another race record. In 1924, Atlanta bluesman Ed Andrews’ record titled ‘Barrelhouse Blues’ entered the market as the first ever, “old fashioned, just-a-man-and-his-guitar” record. While Mamie Smith had recorded with the same label four years prior, the success of Ed Andrews’ record further solidified both Americans desire for the blues and interest in new forms of it.
This is where our emblematic musician (the one who’s song “Barbecue Blues” inspired this article) enters the story. Robert Hicks, or as he was known, Barbecue Bob, was a blues musician who left his rural Georgia hometown and arrived in Atlanta just before the start of the race records phase. Unlike Mamie Smith and Ed Andrews, Barbecue was a talented guitar player as well as singer, and used those skills to pioneer a new style within the already textured blues genre. The Piedmont blues were created by those artists like Barbecue with an elevated talent for guitar picking and notation. It was the first style of blues that featured the guitar as a primary voice rather than just an accompanying instrument. Drawing inspiration partly from traditional ‘negro music’ and partly from the ragtime piano greats such as Scott Joplin, the Piedmont style can be classified technically as having complex, syncopated ragtime-style guitar playing and brief, though clearly enunciated words. Accompanying instruments typically were mandolin, fiddle, harmonica, and/or washboard. To the modern ear, the Piedmont blues sound more “Country” compared to the “Old School” “Chicago” or even “Delta” styles. However it is classified today, the Piedmont style grew to dominate in the Southeastern states, and did quite well as a key component for the young US recording market. In the seventeen years of recording activity in the Piedmont, almost seven hundred songs were recorded and released from artists in that region as part of the race record series. Roughly half of those were produced by artists living in or around Atlanta. In total, more than three hundred and fifty songs came from Atlanta-based artists, and Barbecue Bob accounts for eighty two of those songs. So quick math tells us that about ten percent of the musical identity we have of this time and region comes from one man. Pretty incredible, and we’ll return to Barbecue’s story a bit later.
On the topic of record sales, the Piedmont region was vital for the second phase blues’ development. With affinity for the blues confirmed, the next step was to bring the blues out of Southern swamps and Appalachian backwoods to everyday life of the general American listener. Record companies looking to capitalize on the newfound success of race records grew an interest in the area, mostly due to potential profits. Their sights were clearly set on discovering black artists playing gospel, jazz, and blues who had commercial bank-ability. However, record labels remained skeptical about the long term viability of producing black music to sell in a market that, in spite of changing tastes, remained heavily dominated by whites and white preference. So despite the interest of five major record labels (ARC, Colombia, OKeh, Victor, Vocalion) in the musical fruits to be reaped in the Piedmont, the method employed to bring the local artists and sounds of the Piedmont to a nationwide audience was shockingly inadequate. Due primarily to an unrealistically frugal budget, record labels depended entirely on an impromptu network of southern talent scouts (or A&R men as they were known). Financially, labels were not willing to invest in paying for an unproven blues artist to record in their northern studios, and it made even less sense in their eyes to create headquarters in any of the southern cites. Therefore, with demand for blues music rising and no compromise in sight, the solution took the form of part-time, remote A&R men. These men did a majority of the legwork to sift through and record artists they believed to be marketable to a nationwide audience. In other words, part-time talent scouts had quasi autonomous control of an entire part of the music industry.
It’s safe to say I was a bit surprised to discover that there were only eight A&R men charged with scouting this enormous region of the Southeast for black musicians. The fact of so few talent scouts, to me, is illustrative of the general laissez-faire attitude of record labels. This mentality, coupled with stringent budgets, resulted in many artists falling through the cracks. For example, Paul Brockman, starting in the music business as a phonograph salesman at a furniture store, successfully discovered and launched a few blues artists. In doing so, Brockman earned himself a full time position with Victor Records and was able to quit the furniture sales business. As a full timer for a record label, he was essentially the main A&R man in the Piedmont for close to twenty years. Among his favorite methods of scouting for a new artist was to simply walk the streets of some of the bigger cities and listen. Sidewalks were full of blues and gospel artists, and the fall tobacco harvest brought out even more street performers. One could shop for new talent as you would fruit at a Saturday morning farmers market. Yet of all these supposed artists, the number of them to reach a wider audience more than likely could be counted on one hand. Beyond personal accounts from A&R men like Brockman, artists who were lucky enough to get a race record frequently said they knew of others who were just as talented, deserving, and marketable. Perhaps the most exemplary of passed-over artists was Joe Walker (brother of incredibly influential Blind Willie Walker). Piedmont artist Gary Davis and Barbecue himself knew the fellow personally, performed with him, and thought him to be perhaps the most talented blues guitarist in the Piedmont. Why we have no records from such a talent will forever remain a rhetorical question.
What came to my mind after learning of the utter disarray in which race records were made was the vast number of artists like Joe Walker who passed to be undiscovered and unrecorded. In reality, Barbecue himself was an A&R man and was recorded as a direct result of being a part of the industry. It’s worth knowing as well that the other Atlanta artists whose music ended up being recorded were in Barbecue’s circle of friends and often played with him. In the end, musical talent and even an artist’s bank-ability was ineffectual in the face of pure luck and timing. Surely there were Piedmont musicians who played their whole lives and will be forever unknown. Yet at the same time, here we are talking about Barbecue Bob, a man from the same time and place whose recording career was stopped four years after its start by his untimely death at twenty nine years of age. And while tuberculosis is to blame for Barbecue’s death, the record labels themselves are responsible for the lost careers of so many others. As aforementioned, the system based itself on a “you come to us” philosophy, one which led to furniture store salesmen and chefs working as talent scouts. As a whole, the approach to recording blues artists in this infancy period of the music industry was haphazard at best and certainly had no long term foresight built in. That in itself is pretty disappointing to realize. I think the most accurate metaphor for describing the whole situation would be akin to sending your neighbors’ kids out to catch fireflies with a chicken wire net at two pm in the afternoon. It would be a miracle if they came back with anything at all given the implications, and I feel the same about any black music from the early 19th century. One has to respect the simple fact that any black artists were recorded given the social and political situation of the time.
What was captured by race records therefore only represented the smallest slice of blues music that was to be heard in the early 20th century. Yet, the folklore and musical legacy of the Piedmont from which blues artists drew inspiration was thankfully documented to some degree as well. Predominately compiled by two men, they are due an enormous amount of credit for shaping our modern understanding of the blues history and evolution from the Piedmont and other iconic regions as well. Texas folklorist and musicologist John Lomax began recording cowboy and pioneer music in the first decade of the 20th century. His resulting anthology Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads was published in 1910, and it’s interesting tangentially to note that Lomax made a point of hi-lighting the inclusiveness of American frontier culture. Perhaps not surprising, we discover through Lomax’s research that some of the most famous western folk songs, such as “Home on the Range” were sourced back to black cowboys. In 1931, after more than three decades of documenting western pioneer folklore and culture, John Lomax and his then teenage son Alan thought it paramount to capture and preserve the songs and culture of black America. Backed by the library of congress and armed with the most advanced recording equipment of the time, father and son traveled to southern prisons with aims to capture the distinctive old-time negro melodies that were the base for current blues gospel and jazz tunes. The motivation of the Lomax duo was quite clear: to gather the vast body of American folklore before it disappeared, and to preserve it for the analysis of later scholars. In their view, the largest untapped field of anthropological research was in the southern black population, and the work to be done rested in examining living, human personalities rather than musty tomes and incomplete records. The resulting effort of these two men was the collection of more than ten thousand recordings that account for the lion-share of material in the Archive of American Folk Song maintained by the Library of Congress. Beyond their documentation efforts, they are also credited with discovering and popularizing the likes of music giants such as Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Pete Seger.
“The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes…but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies”
– Alan Lomax
Compared with some of the most impactful anthropological figures of the past few centuries, the efforts of 1920’s record labels and A&R men are rather pitiful. Even still, a bit of acknowledgement is due to anyone at the time who made an effort to record and promote black music. With a 21st century perspective, it is tempting to sit in judgment of the way in which black artists were treated, and of the appropriation of blues for predominately white commercial gain. However, one should stop and ask if such a critical mindset is warranted. We would do well to remember that the American zeitgeist, up until very recently, has been saturated with racism and prejudice. Any blues recordings that were made, even if part of a racially-focused record campaign, have to be recognized as part of a larger integration of black culture into the historical legacy of America. Is it true that a plethora of black talent and music was missed, ignored, or plagiarized? No question. But this doesn’t signify a lack of black cultural influence on the musical fabric of the US. We are unable to know what was heard and felt, and to a certain extent that is tough to swallow. However, there is no denying that our country’s identity changed with every blues artist, performance, and record in spite of it being documented or not.
For any reader, to imagine yourself in the early 20th century is a lesson in gratitude for the comforts of 21st century life. The realities of violence and fear for blacks living in that era are beyond comprehension. The remnants of that protracted struggle are incorporated into the blues much like the mother of an old sourdough bread recipe. But just as importantly, put yourself in the place of a white A&R man in the Piedmont in the 1930’s, or as an assistant to Alan Lomax in a black prison in 1940. Pretty quickly it’s obvious that they contended with their own struggles. I’m bringing this to light not as a means to deny blacks their story, but to shed light on those who faced their own pains to capture, preserve, and share blues music with the world. Other than personal passion, there was no reason for such collections to be done. It’s not as if the Lomax family turned wealthily from their efforts, or that Brockman went on to retire early to a life of leisure. All three of these characters faced tight budgets, small pay checks, and surely a lifetime’s worth of difficulties. For what other reason would they do this if not for their pure love of the blues and black culture as a whole? The enduring strife of blacks in this country is inexorable and should be respected in full. However, our modern opinions of our own past are inseparably linked with what we know of that past. Therefore, the point here is that the documenters are as important in the blues story as the artists themselves. For if Mamie Smith was not recorded, we would have no Barbecue Bob. Without the work of the A&R men introducing the rest of America to the music of the Piedmont, black music would not have reached a national and eventual international audience. And without the rise of blues and eventual birth of the R&B industry, the music we know and love today would be quite different.
“Lord, I’m going to the river, get me a tangled rocking chair.
– Robert Hicks (Barbecue Bob)
I’m going to the river, get me a tangled rocking chair.
And if the blues overtake me, gonna rock away from there.”
At the beginning of this post, I set out on what seemed to be a simple task: to discover what blue’s history had to offer in understanding it’s timeless attraction to listeners across generations. To see if I could come to understand more completely some of the mysteries of a genre born out of and bolstered by immeasurable adversity, grief and violence. Reaching the end of this post, it feels as though i’ve hiked countless miles through some verdant damp forest in hopes of rescue only to find myself arriving at the same spot at which I started. For while I’ve made decent progress toward clarifying some ambiguities, more questions have appeared to take their place. That said, at its base the blues are composed of the same 12 notes as any other style of Western music. So perhaps the magic lies in some esoteric combination of such notes, a certain glitch in our emotional matrix that was unexpectedly discovered in some chance event. Or perhaps not. Much like a lost wanderer circling back to his starting spot, the blues, no matter the style, artist, or era, feel as if they are returning after a hard journey to the point which they started. A pilgrimage of sorts, not to a place but arriving at something different. A type of gravitational center that falls outside of race, class, nationality, and perhaps even time itself. That unknowable entity that anchors the blues in its orbit and drives its revolution cannot be described in musical theory or any other type of technical analysis. Sure, there are Wikipedia definitions to read and YouTube videos to watch that readily offer up scholarly definition of the blues. But such information doesn’t cut it, and we are still left to contemplate why no other genre of modern music has the same mysterious effect on us as listeners. If the secret power of the blues was hidden in some vocational understanding of its structure, we are still left to contend with the fact that some of the most provocative blues songs are those mostly full of silence. What is to make of all this?
This is my take. It seems to me that the fundamental precondition for connecting with others is shared experience. And of all the shared experiences we have as people, the amalgam of phenomena classified as the human condition is one which threads through all of us. It’s as if we are all beads in a collective bracelet, and there exits a central thread that is not punctured by individuality but rather unifies us through our common experience. The awesomeness of the blues, in my opinion, is that it taps heavily and readily into this common thread, and brings voice to emotions all of us have felt. It is for this reason I believe that the blues have transcended any potential impediment that have risen to stop its development. Oppression, racism, bigoted minstrel shows, and a discriminatory recording industry did little to hinder the blues. In truth, everyone is a slave to something, and oppressive forces are not confined strictly to the ideas and actions of other races. Moreover, there is not one person in history who passed a year free from a full heart, troubled spirit, or an attenuated sense of agitation or depression. At some point we all feel the absence of a loved one, pain of being forgotten, anger of being crossed, and despair of being ignored. Sometimes we find our self helpless in the center of a tempest of sorrow, battered by forces that dwarf our being and lay bare our insignificance. The blues act as a timeless antidote to some of the eternal hindrances of the human life, a boat that keeps us afloat when the seas get rough. It’s as if the blues are speaking with a perspective and poise that emerges only from an infinite languish. An immutable voice that centers you by saying everything’s going to be fine. For also as long as you’re feeling blue, you can always sing them away.