1/25/2024 0 Comments Bluex wowI think of the blues as like a river shaped by the conditions around it, made to be a certain way because of what happens-the lay of the land, the obstacles set in its path. Tough times lived by tough people who somehow found in that hardship the right chords, words, and voice to give a truthful, meaningful accounting of the human spirit under strife. Wall captures blues culture as it genuinely was. When the ride begins, there’s no turning back. Instead of the jail where a tail-wagging dog holds the key to freedom, it’s a succession of dimly-lit, smoke filled shacks selling rotgut whisky where men and women take blowing off steam to the far extreme: gambling, fighting, and screwing to wide open blues music performed by the best of the best. Instead of pirates, it’s blues musicians. Only, instead of Colonial Caribbean, it’s the 1930s South. In addition to Bagger Vance and Wizard of Oz, Fat Man Blues feels like the Disney ride Pirates of the Caribbean. If, here, your mind has jumped to Robert Johnson’s Cross Roads Blues-said to be about trading his soul to the Devil in exchange for the ability to play and sing blues-you’re going to get optimum ROI from Fat Man Blues. It’ll involve what seems like a deal with the devil. He meets a mysterious and somewhat shady character named Fat Man who offers to show him the real blues of the 1930s. Hobo John is a Brit on a mission to seek out the roots of blues, its people and places, its spirit and meaning. The Wizard of Oz but a protagonist named Hobo John, not Dorothy, and the Mississippi Delta instead of a yellow brick road. In Fat Man Blues, the novel by Englishman Richard Wall, the blues also are a pilgrimage, a strange and lifeful dream. ![]() I went with Led Zeppelin-a long-lost CD, playing it loud enough to be heard far across fields all the way out to the road as if baring my soul to the world through a hard edged sound inspired by and even stolen from blues greats such as Muddy Waters, Blind Willie Johnson, Willie Dixon, and others. I floated around and around with a Cuba Libre balanced on my forehead. I was trying to adjust to the place and to myself. I once spent most of a summer having a major mid-life meltdown in a blue rubber pool in a cow pasture in rural South Carolina.
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