THE BLUES STEAL MY HEART

As a 21 year old Chicago kid in the early 60's, for me not even the beginning of my life, I came in contact with a group of beings known as blues masters. I had just been introduced to the blues through a few recordings. I fell in love with it.

Hearing the blues greats perform live became a frequent event for me since Chicago was the world center for the blues and this is where they lived and played. And it was even greater good fortune for me, from the first moments of my own career in the blues, that I found myself performing with these world masters. One in particular captured most of my attention. They called him "the Howlin' Wolf". What I experienced was not just a great hulk of a blues man, nearing his 60's, climbing and rolling and grinning and sauntering across the bar room stage, throwing his huge hands into the smoky air, and growling out his tunes - but a spell-binding energy that was, raw, spontaneous, and sparkling, and poured out as an expression of his obviously deep love for his blues.

If you could have been there you would understand why the blues was, and still is, the most influential form of modern music in the world, giving life to Country, Jazz, Rock & Roll, Dixie Land, Hip Hop, R & B, Rag Time, Soul Music, Funk, Heavy Metal, and all the branches of modern music including even classical in some instances.

Blues by no means is "sad" music as the cliché might insist. It was fun, happy, and uplifting. One of the great blues players insisted "If blues were so sad why are people dancing?" And for this young enthusiast, these performances - by Howlin' Wolf as well as the other masters like Muddy Waters, Sam Lay, Otis Spann, and the Little and Big Walters - were irresistible. What I saw was that there is no end to how much one could focus into what one does, and what ecstasy there is in that action.

But the musical form itself holds its own joy. Blues is an ecstatic form - it is said that the blues is all soul. The melodies bend and slide to create an incredible flow of tension and release. The rhythms in the old blues tradition stretch and shrink and vacillate to follow any mood or phrasing.

In fact it was the rhythm of this music that particularly swept me away when I was experimenting with it at home. I would always get caught up in a particularly hypnotic rhythm called the shuffle which is similar to a heart beat. I would play this over and over and over with little or no apparent variation and I would close my eyes and just start laughing. It made me feel so good that I could have burst open. Of course it drove my parents crazy! But I became a complete lover of the blues.

PART TWO: The Blues Steal My Life