How To Know If You Can Be A Blues Singer

Tailgate

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inspired by earlier music thread... another email 'funny find'...


How To know if you can be a Blues Musician:

1. Most Blues begin "Woke up this mornin'..."

2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you
stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with
the meanest face in town."

3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it.
Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the
meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in
town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound."

4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a
ditch - ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues
don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues
transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet a ircraft
and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays
a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults
sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the
electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place
in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just
clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the
best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place
that don't get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male
pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing is not the
blues. Breaking your leg 'cause a alligator be chomping on it is.

9. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting
is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.


10. Good places for the Blues:
a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed
d.bottom of a whiskey glass

Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom's
b. gallery openings
c. Ivy League institutions
d. golf courses

11. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you
happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.

12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues? Yes, if:
a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can't be satisfied

No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund

13. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger
Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also
got a leg up on the blues.

14. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the
Blues.
Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. nasty black coffee

The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast

15. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues
death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to
die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a
broken down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis
match or while getting liposuction.

16. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling

17. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie

18. Persons with names like Michelle, Amber, Jennifer, and Heather can't
sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

19. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit Lemon, Lime, Kiwi,
etc.)
c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)

For example:
Blind Lime Jefferson,
Jakeleg Lemon Johnson or
Cripple KiwiFillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")

20. I don't care how tragic your life -- if you own a computer, you
cannot sing the blues.

21. People with the Blues eat barbecue, corn bread, beans, and their
last meal.

22. Good blues instruments: guitar, slide trombone, saxophone,
trumpet,and harmonica.

23. Bad blues instruments: everything else, especially the oboe, French
horn, and viola.

24. You got the blues if you have lumbago or a bad back. You don't have
the blues if you have a mental disorder ending in "syndrome.."

25. Black Jack is a good blues game. Keno is not a good blues game.

26. Blues jobs include working on the railroad, picking cotton,
musician, or just got fired.

27. Blues animals include the junkyard dog and mule (not donkey).

28. Epitaph on a blues musician's tombstone: "I didn't wake up this morning"
 
Can you get the blues on Rodeo Drive, being short of a 50 bill to buy a bottle Chivas Regal?
 
These are great. Hillbilly music is about people as completely messed up as the people who have the blues, but blues doesn't happen in the mountains, only the south coastal plains. Swamps should harbor the blues, but they don't because you can't get a mule in there and cotton won't grow there anyway. Lastly, blues is played in juke joints, but never in honky-tonks unless it includes yodeling. And people in juke joints know how to dance; totally different in a honky-tonk.

Ha
 
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Very funny. It reminded me of a Martin Mull routine - seems they are not on youtube, but I did find this (Straight Talk About the Blues / Ukulele Blues):

Martin Mull and his Fabulous Furniture in your Living Room (1973) - Cirkus Berserkus


"Some people say you need to be poor to play the blues. Don't make me laugh. My Grandpa, who taught me the blues, was a Real Estate man in Cleveland, and doing very, very well. It didn't inhibit his ability to have the blues one bit. He just had a higher quality blues than most people. We called him "Blind Lemon Pledge"".

Then he plays the song - Ukulele Blues:

"I woke up this afternoon, both cars were gone, I felt so lowdown deep inside, I threw my drink across the lawn".

-ERD50
 
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