By Frank Matheis © 2005
The other day, I was browsing the personal ads in the local New York paper and came across a woman who was seeking “an upscale, cultured, successful, educated white gentleman who enjoys international travel, fine wine and dining, art museums, Mozart at Carnegie Hall and Sonny Rollins at the Beacon.”
Hell, I wasn’t looking for a lady, but “that could be me”, I thought proudly, still somewhat amazed that this scruffy hippie had become, well, “an upscale cultured gentleman”.
Here I am, smack dab in the middle of my mid-life crisis. I can talk about history and art, have been all around the world and have eaten things I never even knew existed. I am well versed with world politics, philosophy and technology. Many of my favorite musicians and composers are noble cultural icons, who I can proudly flout in the best of high company– Jascha Heifitz, John Coltrane, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Django Reinhardt, Mozart and more. Even my passion for Bob Dylan is somewhat palatable to the people who wear pearls and bowties to concerts. Yet, there is this one big thing that makes me a total social misfit, a cultural oddball unfit for polite “upscale, cultured” society. It makes them snicker, wrinkle their noses and talk behind my back, whispering “…how could he?”
What makes me so weird? If I ever went on a first date with a personal-ad-lady, how could I explain my lowly self? Here it is: I love the blues. I don’t mean just the popular Chicago electric blues, the West Coast big-band Jump blues and blues-rock, but the real deal, the forlorn, moaning, aching, rough and edgy deep-roots country music, the original, archaic folk blues. Nowadays the music pundits like to call it “American Primitivism”. Here we would be, on the first date, riding down 7th Avenue, with the primitive Mississippi Sheiks blaring on the CD player and she’d say the phrase, you know the one: “How can you listen to that stuff?” You can imagine how the rest of that night would go.
The first time I realized that this “primitive stuff” made me an outcast was in High School, when a musician friend declared in front of all the cool people, in my unworthy presence, “Frank only listens to crude music”. My already fragile self-esteem sunk lower than a doghouse floor mat. What an outrage! How could those people with their Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Beatles call Big Joe Williams crude? “Give me Robert Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw, and Blind Blake anytime over that stupid Yes band”, I thought.
Once, while riding in the car with a great microscopist who is also a very good Classical violinist with a very singular musical appreciation, I made up a little parable. “It’s like this”, I told him, “When you walk through a summer meadow filled with flowers, you may love the noble red rose the most. She is the loveliest flower of them all. But when you come upon a daisy or the buttercup with its vivid yellow, or a rich little violet, do you not also see their beauty?” So, I went on preaching the silly lesson that there is something exciting in all musical styles, if you are just willing to be open to it. “No”, he answered flatly. I might as well have asked him to try Satanism for a few weeks just to see if it had any merit.
It’s a lot easier for the high and mighty to accept an interest in “folklore” and academic, ethno-musicological study than it is to understand that other people who may also be equally “cultured, educated and intelligent” actually love this music. We can study the natives, but joining them? Whaaa!
You think I am exaggerating? You may find it hard to imagine the intense disdain of a Classical music snob when some a culturally inferior fellow comes along and babbles about being infatuated with the ignoble rhythms of mostly illiterate poor black folks from the bottom of society, and then dares to compare “it” to their great genius masters.
Nowadays, I am cruelly facetious and mean to them and really like to rub it in, just to see them raging, until they look like a stuffed tomato ready to explode in the microwave. I equate Robert Johnson with the greatest musical geniuses of the 20th Century. I’ll argue with Classical music snobs that Lighting Hopkins’ and Short Stuff Macon’s one-chord rhythm strums and single note wails can be as haunting and rich as a Beethoven– if not in sophistication and structure than in feeling. I’ll propose that the simple lyrics of the early blues carry as much depth as Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas. I‘ll say that I think Sleepy John Estes is one of the best musicians ever and that Blind Willie Johnson’s slide guitar solos, in their own way and on an emotional basis, are as good as the best of musicians in any genre. Then, I brag that the blues is the only music that can help you through life so that you never need a therapist, Prozac and Viagra. Of course, right then and there my discussion partners are utterly convinced that Prozac is indeed what I need, and not just a single dose—take two.
As their faces turn dour in disdain and loathing, the cultural snobs can hardly contain their scathing repugnancy of my peculiar taste. When I excuse myself from the dinner table to go tinkle, the insults gush like Hollywood gossip columnists at a Kaffeeklatsch.
“What, does he think he is black?”
“Does he seriously equate that stuff to music?”
“He really thinks that black Hillbilly music is equal to Beethoven?”
Yes, I know that a twelve-bar blues is not exactly a symphony. I accept that the blues can be repetitive, simple and ethereal, but I see beauty in that. And yes, I understand that Popa John Creech is not Izaak Perlman’s equal and that Sonny Terry is not quite John Coltrane. I can tell the difference between the musical forms, but I don’t see a difference in value.
The truth is, they may be right. After all, what do I know about mistreating barrelhouse women, rocks for a pillow, sleeping in hollow logs, 44 pistols and black lightning? How can I profess an affinity for music recorded by the most oppressed people in our society expressing their anguish, hopes and dreams, and claim any part of it? A black student at my college once pointed out, rather condescendingly, “My grandfather listens to that shit”. Yeah, even black people don’t listen to that old blues music anymore. What does all this music recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s, songs about killings, debauchery, sex and hard times, have to do with me?
I am an immigrant from South Germany, not from Mississippi!
I am not black, blind or poor. I am supposed to have a cultural affinity for Bach, not Barbecue Bob. Anyway, more than once, the blues pundits and Afro-Centrists have told me that in order to truly “feel” the blues in your soul, you have to be black. They said that I could not play the blues harmonica with truehearted feeling and that only black people had the right to play the blues. That leaves me empty handed. When people asked me: “How can you listen to that stuff?” the one answer I always had since I was fifteen years old was “Because it plucks the bass string of my soul and it tingles me right down to my toes.”
So what do I do now?
I’ll listen to Robert Johnson for the millionth time, and each time my heart fills with joy. It’s my music. I am an “upscale cultured white gentleman” and a bluesman – and I don’t care who knows it.