Fattening Frogs For Snakes
|
Wednesday, 28 December 2005 10:43 |
Doctor Blues
for Jerry Brock
Roosevelt Sykes, better known as The Honey Dripper, played the piano & sang like few men who have ever lived
all the way from his home in Helena, Arkansas, & down in New Orleans with the piano professors, in the logging & turpentine camps & jute joints throughout the Deep South,
with the slick characters & big shooters in Memphis & St. Louis & Chicago, from the early days before 1920 until his death on July 17, 1983. Roosevelt says:
Well, in the first place, the blues is a talent. Blues is a talent,
you can t learn that. Nobody teaches it, there's no schools for it. Nobody can teach it to you.
You see, God gives every man a talent it don t come in schools. It's just something you born with
can t nobody give it. You have it, you can t buy it, you can t give it away.
You got it, so it's something you born with. Blues is a part of a man. It's the way he feels.
Now, some people don t understand. They think a blues player have to be worried, troubled,
to sing the blues. That's wrong. It's a talent. If every man with a worry could play the blues, why another guy
worried to death & he can t sing a tune. You ask him to sing the blues, he says he can t sing it.
You have to work hard. It will come to you. It's there for you. Lots of folks got talent;
they don t even use it, but do better sleeping than another fellow could do it woke.
So blues is a sort of thing on people like the doctor. I ll put it this way:
There's a doctor, he has medicine, he's never sick, he ain t sick, but he make the stuff
for the sick people. See, you wouldn t say, Call the doctor. I m the doctor. Oh,
you re a sick man? No, I just work on the sick people. So the blues player,
he ain t worried & bothered, but he got something for the worried people. Doctor, you can see his medicine,
he can see his patient. Blues, you can t see the music, you can t see the patient cause it's soul. So I works
on the soul & the doctor works on the body. Both are important, they all mixed to one. Two makes one.
Detroit May 6, 1986/ New Orleans November 13, 1995
3.1.660 |