BUT BLUES FEELS LIKE HOME TO ME

by Rowland Jones Images: Supplied

It was early 2007 and my wife Lesley and I were about to move to Italy; my intention was to get involved in the flourishing Blues scene there. I was trying to write an arrangement of ‘The thrill is gone.’ inspired by a version by Zachary Breaux but as it developed I became keen on the idea of creating a new song – yes, writing an original blues.

I’d been involved in writing songs before but it had always been as part of a band in a group effort or kind of co-assembling a song, using my music and someone else’s lyrics but this time, this would be my song. Here was the problem. I’m a Brit living in South Manchester and about to move to Italy. How much further from the blues can you get? The closest thing I get to picking cotton balls is flossing my teeth and I didn’t even own a stall for another mule to be kicking in! At this point, I remembered a radio programme where the interviewer had asked Chris Rea about the idea that ‘white men couldn’t sing the blues’. His response was precise and concise, AND probably the only time I’ve heard the word ‘bollocks’ on Radio Four. So, with this thought in mind, I began to write my first Blues.

My first thoughts were relating to what I wasn’t in terms of being a ‘Bluesman’ and trust me there were many … and out they came ‘I’ve never been to Memphis, Never been to Tennessee.’ ‘Never been on the killing floor, Never picked a bale.’ I included every blues cliche I could except ‘Woke up this morning’ which I felt had already been parodied sufficiently, and anyway this was not meant to be a parody, it was my take on the Blues. I was pretty pleased with my first effort. (from ‘I’ve Never Been to Memphis’) OK it does mention waking in the morning, but only a bit...

‘Never been to Memphis, never been to Tennessee

Never been to Memphis, never been to Tennessee

But I’ve been down to the crossroads, and everybody pass by me.

I ain’t no Delta bluesman, can’t tell a nickel from a dime

I ain’t no Delta bluesman, can’t tell a nickel from a dime

But I’ve woken early in the morning and found dead cats on the line.

He has got a mojo, and a Johnny conkeroo

He’s the hoochie coochie man, who’ll put a voodoo boogie on you

I said good morning blues, won’t you ever set me free?.

Though I’ve never been to Memphis, the blues feels like home to me.

Never been on the killing floor, never picked a bale

But I’ve been where the thrill is gone and felt that hell-hound on my trail

I said good morning blues; have mercy; hear my plea!

Though I’ve never been to Memphis, the blues feels like home to me.’

A short while after arriving in Italy, I was invited to sit in with an embryonic blues band. I suddenly realised, as the only English speaker in the band, I was also expected to sing and front it. By some bizarre quirk of fate, I just happened to have these lyrics in my guitar case and suddenly I was a frontman – very happy and somewhat surprised at the promotion. Ironically, because I was singing to an audience that didn’t have English as a first language, it meant that I was probably under less close scrutiny than I would have been in front of a UK audience. This was just as well as I found playing the multiple role of singer/guitarist/frontman somewhat challenging at first, especially presenting the band in a foreign language. As a consequence, on numerous occasions I’d sing, say ‘you and me’ when it should have been ‘me and you’ , and I quickly developed the technique of garbling a spontaneously re-written line which ended with the correct sound to rhyme with my mistake.

Having begun to settle into my new role, I threw myself into creating my own repertoire, safe in that knowledge that most of the audience would not understand what I was singing anyway, something that gave me a substantial safety net! One of my next attempts to create original blues was ‘True True Blues’ where I adopted the age old technique of writing a story of hardship, but still with reference to the idea of not being a Bluesman.

‘Not born in the windy city

Not travelled down Route 66

Wanna play the blues guitar

You got the chords, you got the licks

Your woman has treated you badly

Your friends have let you down

You lost your job a second time

Got no money to hit the town

‘Got that feeling, I’ve paid my dues, Bad bad feeling,

I’ve got the true true blues.’

(from ‘True True Blues’)

Another device I used in my writing was to refer to some of the genuine Blues guys!

‘Don’t want be faster than Slowhand, Clearer than Muddy

More regal than the Kings

Friendlier than Buddy

Don’t want anything much

I just want to play the Blues’

(from ‘I just want to play the blues’)

Many of my songs followed the traditional themes: good love, gone bad; and bad luck in general but I did become even more adventurous in my lyrics. I love quotes and I had come across a quote by Nietzsche, that well-known but often misspelled philosopher, who said, ‘If a man has a why then he can survive and bear anything.’

On that basis I wrote ‘Where’s the Why?’ – the story of a lonely soul looking for a partner:

‘You might be tall and slender with long blonde hair, You might be reet petite - I don’t really care

As long as your mind works and your heart is true

I don’t care if your eyes are green, brown or blue.’ Where’s the why? Where’s the you?’

To be honest I rarely mention the source of this inspiration for fear of sounding pretentious. However, I don’t feel so bad, since I discovered that Nietzsche also said ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’ – a phrase that has been done to death by self-help gurus, management consultants and philosophical songwriters across the globe!

Again, following a tradition in the Blues, I couldn’t resist trying to inject a little bit of humour into my lyrics. In the Leon Redbone inspired ‘Am I feeling Blue’ the protagonist complains that ‘My baby’s gone cold on me, But her sister has not!,’ a variation on the Red House punchline, whilst ‘Better give it up’ combines two common themes in the Blues – Doctors and drinking.

‘I was almost sober when I saw the Doc

With lunch I’d just had a flagon

He looked me in the eye; said ‘Sorry it’s the drink ‘ I said “I’ll come back when you’re on the wagon.’

(from ‘Better Give It Up’ )

So, had I overcome my ‘fear’ of being accused of lacking authenticity? Well maybe, but there were still other issues – not so much to do with the attitude and the feeling but to do with the American nature of Blues lyrics. To be more precise let me give you an example. In the 70’s, I was playing in what you would probably describe as a country rock band. In one of our early songs, Jon, the writer, had written ‘We got to Matlock just before the break of day’. You see what I mean? It just doesn’t fit well. Sammy Cahn, who knew a thing or two about song-writing, talks about the sing-ability of words in lyrics but I feel that there is another element that counts – something a sociologist might call cultural congruency but I’ll call making it fit.

For example: places to refer to: New York? Yes. Dallas? Yes. Swansea? No. Cars to feature: Cadillac? Yes. Chevy? Yes. Cortina? No. (unless you have the comic genius of Ian Dury).

I’m not sure that Jon and I ever saw eye to eye on ‘Matlock’ but suffice it to say that our best songs were Los Angeles and Ain’t gonna catch me again – the first, a song about a city we’d never been to and the second, a cowboy story about an outlaw (who did shoot the sheriff) so, in the end, I think we went along with tradition.

Of course, aspiration to the ‘foreign = exotic’ has always been there in popular songwriting. Chattanooga choo-choo? Yes Chattanooga - a place a resident once described to me as being like Crewe. Herb Alpert called his band The Tijuana brass with a certain amount of irony given that at that time it was notoriously violent. Of course, the fantasy can work the other way, too. I was in a studio in New York and I remarked on the Manchester-built mixing desk. The engineer commented, ‘Trafford Park - sounds beautiful’ - a description I felt that I should clarify rapidly, in case it became his fantasy holiday destination.

So there’s one more element to consider – the grammar. I can honestly say that in conversation I’ve never said ‘Ain’t’ never said ‘Gonna’ and above all never used the term ‘Baby’ to apply to anything other than well . . . a baby. Yet we do it in songs all the time. . . or at least, I do. And so I shall continue to write my songs using words like Cadillac and gasoline and referencing New York City and Tennessee (but having said that I’ve also included ‘Descartes’ and ‘equilibrium’ in lyrics...)

So, what conclusion can I draw from these ramblings? Am I guilty of writing the blues when I’ve never had the hard life of the southern states and not even been there until recently? Well, I look at it like this: songs are essentially stories and I don’t think anybody has ever criticised Agatha Christie for never having been involved in a murder investigation (or been a murderer, for that matter) and though I am CLEARLY NOT making any direct comparison, Shakespeare never visited Italy yet he wrote convincingly about Venice and Verona. Just saying... www.rowlandjonesmusic.com talkingsongs.uk

Rowland Jones is a singer/songwriter and guitarist based in South Manchester. His recent imaginatively titled album ‘Rowland Jones - Live’ was recorded at The Great British Rock and Blues Festival in Skegness in Jan 2020 and was nominated in the Best Live CD category in The 2021 Independent Blues Awards. He also presents talkingsongs.uk a weekly on-line programme where he talks with other songwriters such as Dana Gillespie, When Rivers Meet, Rachelle Coba, Steve Ferbrache (The Achievers). On-line since June 2020, he has interviewed around 70 songwriters from UK, New York, Nashville, Miami, Portland, Canada, Australia, and Italy with a total of over 140,000 viewers.