The Soul Of Blues

Close your eyes and be taken back to a time when there was no video games, tv, radio, or malls. All there were was wood around you with just your imagination and a heart full of soul. They sang about a life they lived and a life they were about to live. Thats the blues. Heartache and pain were plentiful, but singing about lost loves, little money or drowning your sorrow in hard cheap liquor quenched the thirst of the very life they lived. Theres a big difference, to me, from listening to a man/woman who grew up in a good life than one that had to scratch their way through poverty and sing their way to the top of the ladder. Personally I prefer the latter. The Blues is the latter. From the deep woods of the delta, working on cotton fields as slaves or living on the streets preaching the blues, the life they lived was a hard traveled road. A one that carried on right from the gut through the throat and out the mouth. A true blues performer can get his message across with just simple words, but with such a powerful message that not even the greatest poet could say it any better. Probably because it wasn't just written down from imagination but from real life experiences. To me theres nothing better than having listening to a bluesman sitting outside with his acoustic guitar, striped down and raw, with nothing else only the strum of the guitar and his raw and barely recognizable voice. Its the soul of music, these guys didn't one day decide to create a band because it was cool, or because of the money, or drugs, or women. They simply did it because it was in them to do. They rarely made a living at it besides street performing and only then enough to feed themselves. They sang public domain songs in the cotton fields to get through the day or take their minds off the pain in their hands from picking cotton. They started off with sticks with a single string on them and plucked it pretending to be a national star and not with a gibson les paul or a strat. They worked their way to the top and made it their. even if it was way after their time. At least they got there in time.