Blues icons reflect on human experience
By TOM OGORZALEK
Scene Music Critic
Deep down in the delta, where the blues were born, they ding the sad songs of hard times, of love lost, of the essential darkness and solitude at the heart of human existence. The life of a bluesman is not sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, but sadness, loss and a pain that cannot be explored without the music that defines it — the blues.
In this age of feel-good pop with little or no substantive reflection on the actual human experience, there remain pillars of resistance to modern trends: Men continue to play the blues after having done so for decades.
The greatest icons of the blues in post-World War II America are John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, a pair who each have been playing for more than four decades, and whose latest offerings are glimpses of a genre that, more than any other, defines the essence of the unheard and unheralded American.
B.B. King's Greatest Hits is a fine catalog of the man's brilliant showmanship and technical and heartfelt brilliance on the electric blues guitar. His moniker "The King of the Blues" is revealed immediately in the first track, and then he goes on to why that has been his deserved title. There is no doubt about his status as the best-known and most widely acclaimed bluesman on the planet. After growing up in Mississippi and finding his break into modern musicianship in Memphis, Tenn., King has kept the hits coming for decades.
This greatest hits anthology includes live tracks, including "Every Day I Have the Blues," studio cuts like "The Thrill is Gone" and two bonus songs in which he plays with Robert Cray and U2.
King's merit is found in his great ability to sing soulfully and sadly at times, while reserving the right to play equally pointed solos on the guitar while his accompaniment keeps time and rhythm in the background. At times he diverges into a groove that is almost too smooth, but this is merely a way of making the blues compatible with modern music.
Most importantly, the soul of the genre is still well-preserved. King, as a showman, introduced a new generation of young men and women to the blues, and serves as an invaluable ambassador. "Music is love, and my love is music, in perfect harmony," he sings in "I Like to Live the Love." It isn't tough to believe.
John Lee Hooker has been around even longer than King, and his life is revealed like a book in the lines that traverse his weathered visage. His life took him from Mississippi to Detroit, and finally to Chicago, home of the greatest blues community in America. His music, however, is even more widely traveled, incorporating African rhythms and forms, while his voice is more of a spoken word than the smooth incantations heard from King.
Hooker's versatility is evident on his The Best of Friends, as he collaborates with such diverse musicians as Eric Clapton ("Boogie Chillen"), Van Morrison ("I Cover the Waterfront") and Ben Harper ("Burnin' Hell"). Hooker is the quintessential bluesman — he uses his music to move beyond the sadness and the poverty that he has known.
Although these men have been lucky enough to enjoy commercial success, it is not this brand of success that defines their music. Rather, the resonance of their music and its coincidence with the depth and breadth of joy and pain in human life make them great. It makes them worthy of the greatest respect and admiration, for they truly lived and learned. And that which they understood is revealed in their music. All that is necessary is to listen.
Listen to the musings of T-Bone and Mighty K-Mac on the Notre Dame Blues Experiment, WSND 88.9 FM, Thursday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight.
All Scene Stories for Tuesday, October 12, 1999
