Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Can A White Boy Sing The Blues?

Everybody has the blues sometimes. Everyone has lost a job or loved one. But you have to live through some hard times to know the blues. It doesn't matter what color you are. Woody Guthrie had the blues. My grand-daddy had the blues.

I know a little bit about the blues and a little bit about just trying to make it. I've worked the pouring line in a steel mill in the heat of summer, breathing black steel dust with hot steel rolling down my back. I've shoveled mud, and cleaned out barges on the Mississippi. I've lost a lot of jobs and a lot of women, good and bad.

I hitch-hiked out of New Orleans with nothing but an old suitcase and my guitar. I've been on the road and had to go into places and ask if I could play a few songs just to get a meal. I know what it's like to have to get food stamps and go sell blood to make $5.

I've narrowly escaped death more times than I want to remember.

I lived in the Delta, just across the levee from the Mississippi. I've been sucked out into the river and swallowed the Mississippi mud. I've not only been deep down in the Delta, I've had the Delta deep down in me.

So ask me if I think a white boy can sing the blues.