The Daddy Has the Blues and Just Can't Help Hisself

So the daddy is
sitting in his living room in his comfortable home. But he remembers when it wasn't always so. He remembers when he first came to Minneapolis, Minnesota and washed dishes at a local restaurant for food and a place to stay. And then, like a slap upside the head, the words of Chicago blues guitarist Mighty Joe Young (He played for R&B great Tyrone Davis and was also a side man to blues greats Jimmie Dawkins and Otis Rush, respectively) rises up from some place deep within his soul; and the daddy begins to sing:

"Nothing in my pocket but the bottom.
More than I can say for my shoe.
Speaking of the blues I got em.
That's all I can afford to lose.
You know I need,
yes, I need someone.
Oh, before you reach the end.
You, too, might need a friend."

To shake this feeling, the daddy goes for a walk and...BAM!...gets hit again like Toni Soprano whacks a mafia underling on a late Sunday night, deep in some dark woods, somewhere outside New Jersey. This time it's Lurrie Bell singing a slow blues with a heavy backbeat and a bitter-sweet tone of resignation, asking someone but no one in particular:

"What can a poor man do
you know, when the blues keeps following around?
What can a poor man do you know,
you know when the blues keeps following him around?
Get him a pint a liquor
sit and drink it on down.

You know sometimes I feel
like drinking me some gasoline.
Oh, sometimes I feel
like drinking me some gasoline.
Striking me a match
and blow my fool self up in steam."

Let's face it: the daddy's got the blues, and, like an addict who has reached rock bottom, he just can't help hisself.

So what does a shaking addict do when he needs a fix? Call the nearest chemical dependency agency and say "I was wondering if you could provide me a little assistance?" Please. He goes to a drug dealer and then retires to the nearest dark alley to seek a little release, a little peace, with a vile of crack, the only God he knows.

So what did the daddy to do get his fix ? He went to a record shop and copped "Let's Talk About Love" by legendary blues guitar genius Lurrie Bell and sat in his own personal alley, his SUV, getting some cathartic release, if only for a day, from the blues that keeps following him around.

"Let's Talk About Love" is honest blues. There's not a lot of loud, fast playing tune that provides little time to breathe and take it all in. Lurrie takes his time and settles into a groove to play on the beat just the way his father, Carey Bell, a great harmonica player, used to do it in Muddy Water's band. In his playing, Lurrie takes clean breaks and steadily builds on a solo like a bricklayer building a house.

But this is not to say the brother doesn't rock. He gets you patting your feet, nodding your head, even dancing in the bathroom while brushing your teeth with several tunes spread appropriately throughout the CD. Whether a shuffle or down-and-out blues, Lurrie and his red Gibson moans and soars and screams inside a soulful backbeat that will make you feel it all over-- feel it to your bones.

But the daddy especially loves Lurrie's rhythm playing on "Why Am I Treated So Bad?" and his stirring solo on "Missing You;" And if you got a chance to see the December 2007 Living Blues magazine article on Lurrie Bell, you would understand why. You see that, besides alcohol, Lurrie battled a mental disease (schizophrenia) as well. And just when he was getting over it, just when this genius of the blues guitar was starting to wield his axe all over Chicago again, his loving partner and then his mentoring father died. So suddenly he's left to take care of his child and his life alone. And the sound of his red Gibson tells you that the blues still follows him around-- that it's been a struggle, that it still is a struggle.

On the other hand, his honest soul searching and truth-telling with his voice and with his amening on that Gibson is one of the reasons the daddy sometimes turns away from other music and listens to nothing but the blues for months.

Poet Sterling Plump said of Bell:

"He speaks scared chords
a guitar screams in his
eyes. Because he is some
one shot out of a shot
gun house by white
lightning that makes him
a.c.h.a. high
rise resident...
He is a part of speech
therapy we master
to speak sanity"

Has the blues ever followed you around?
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Note: This is an article that readers asked
me to repost.