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Sunday, 18 December 2005 09:44 |
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
3.1.670 |
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