Art cuts an improbable figure as a bluesman. He’s a small, disheveled white guy with a startled expression. But when he plays guitar onstage, he cranes his neck and stares ahead with a hard look in his eyes, as if he’s a different man. Yet, Art’s a little glum about the state of the blues these days. He says, “Nobody plays blues with any real feeling anymore.”
There are also plenty of locals around, including Smokey and the Black Lone Ranger. Smokey used to sing rhythm and blues. On Mondays he acts as the facilitator, passing around the tip jar and setting out sandwich meats and bread for the band.
Do you mean they can’t do it technically, or they just don’t?
“He plays well,” Johnny tries to explain. “He doesn’t have any killer instinct. Do you know what I mean?”
I can vouch for that. At first I have a hard time distinguishing which guitar is which. I don’t tell Art, because I don’t want to discourage him from trying to make his point. I’m sure I’ll catch on eventually. Rockin’ Johnny says playing well is not just a matter of technical prowess–it’s a reflection of something essential in a man’s soul. If audiences respond to the blues because it touches something deep within them, Art’s complaint that no one can play it anymore begins to sound awfully grave. If he’s right, then that leaves a lot of people who can’t hear that something is missing.
“I don’t know,” he says, reluctant to follow the point home. “I don’t listen to those things, so I wouldn’t know.”
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In the 1920s, historian Paul Oliver notes, some folklorists watched the growing popularity of the blues with trepidation. “It was, they believed, detrimental to the survival of the other, and probably older, black folk idioms.” In the 1940s jazz fans slow to embrace the advent of bebop were written off as “moldy figs” by their contemporaries. In the 60s Charles Keil used the same epitaph to write off blues fans with unreasonable prejudices for blues styles before World War II. Art says, “I think that’s a little ridiculous, to draw the line at prewar styles. There were plenty of great bluesmen in the 50s and early 60s. On the other hand, I could understand someone not listening to contemporary blues.”
