In 1964 I became friends with my landlord’s son when he came to paint the window-frames. I was suffering from depression and he recommended a psychoanalyst by the name of Theodore Faithfull, a white-haired gentleman in his eighties, the grandfather of Marianne Faithfull, who had just recorded her first hit, “As Tears Go By“. (These days she’s a celebrated deep-voiced chanteuse. The landlord had been seeing this analyst. I became friends with the son: he spent days at the house painting window-frames. So I too went to see Theodore, and I don’t think it did me any good, but that is another story.
My friend was a musician, into the Blues. He generously gave me an old guitar, made of steel, which he said was a Dobro or a National. I used to (try to) play numbers like this one, as sung by Muddy Waters:
Big leg womens
Keep your dresses down
you got stuff make a bulldog
hug a hound
. . .
if you roll your belly
like you roll your dough
people is cryin’, they want some mo’
roll your belly
like you roll your dough
people is crying for mo’
He also recorded some blues for me, on a reel of tape: it was before the days of cassettes. The singer had a high-pitched voice so I thought it was a woman. I had never heard anything like this voice, these tunes, this rhythm, this guitar playing. Because I moved to another town, I lost touch with the donor and had no one knowledgeable to ask who was the blues-man or woman. In those days I took little note of lyrics, almost unintelligible as they often were to my ear, but one line gave a clue: “My name is JB Lenoir”, a name I heard occasionally on specialist radio programmes, though never one of his actual songs.
It was only this year, 2006, that I managed to download Vietnam Blues, which contains J B’s best songs, the ones taped by my friend in ’64. And now I’ve tracked down a film, The Soul of a Man, on the blues of Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James and JB Lenoir, with some precious amateur footage of J B’s performances.
It’s funny how the memory of songs lives within you. When your ears encounter them again, it’s as if songs can live in you when you haven’t heard them for forty years, and then you hear them again and they have never been gone from your life.
I’m still unable to decipher most of the lyrics, but glad to discover that this hero of my youth was such an aware person, with songs like Eisenhower Blues, Alabama March and Vietnam Blues: songs expressing personal empathy as well as musical genius.
From his song Good Advice:
What Grandma told me was-a good advice
She said “you keep on going if you’re sure you’re right”
a wayfarer’s notes 
the words “right” and “wrong” should be expunged from the language “english”.
Replaced, perhaps, by “appropriate” and “inappropriate”.
(or is that too difficult for a generation who uses words like m8 and cul8r?)
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So, Davo, you're going to persuade Aussies to use the expression, “Too appropriate, mate?”
Personally I take the view that all words are OK so long as we don't think of them as representing divinely-ordained abstractions.
In a given situation, I may know what is right. Naturally it is a subjective judgement. As a member of a jury, I weigh things up and decide.
Over here in Pommieland, we already have far too much use of appropriate and inappropriate, so that when teacher gives a hug to a little child who has hurt itself on the playground, this may be censured and the teacher suspended for “inappropriate touching”. Or so the tabloid papers claim, trying to stir up their readers to apoplexy.
Davo, we are getting old, that's what it is, don't you think?
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I just wrote a piece on alternative healing and would be interested in your opinion on it
http://cornealius.blogspot.com/
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Hi thks for posting on my site.
ive actually done mickel therapy for about a year and a half, i found it made me alot better and i would definatly recommend it to any else with ME/CFS but after 6 mounths of doing it i hit a kind of block and stopped getting any better so ive started trying a few other aproaches, mickel therapy helps but im not sureits the whole answer.
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Excellent advice.
Maybe music should be considered a good form of meditation and therapy.
Following the lyrics is a good way to develop mindfulness. And relishing the musical sounds drives away frustrations. Whatever.
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I've written to you privately, C. Whether it is the whole answer or not is of course for you to decide. We each are in charge of our destinies—or are we?
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Hi friend, interesting blog, keep up the good work.
“Copyright reserved”… Yeah, right, you will get over it my friend, those days are behind us. Any thing you see on my blog, feel free to take it. A lot of it I get from other places anyway.
Put an other nickel in, in the nickelodium, and let there be music, music, music. Hugs.
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English has too damn many words in it. The word smiths in this country just can't turn their stupid brains off. 🙂
Keep it simple I always say, so that anyone can read it, and hopefully understand it.
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Hi Billy B, thanks for dropping by. I'm still laughing at the jokes at your place. As for the copyright business, it's no big deal, just in case I should one day want to publish something here on paper, I wanted to put down some kind of a marker that it was in fact my original stuff, especially as for good reasons I post here under a pseudonym.
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I enjoy blues music. yeah it's funny how a song from a long time ago brings back memories and feelings too. Sometimes i feel so bad i don't want to listen to music. other times i bring it on by listening to music (old music from past)and cry. I have a CD named best of the blues and Vietnam blues is on it, its by Cassandra Wilson…i'm putting it in my computer now i think i'll listen some.
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Yes, Kathy, Cassandra Wilson was on the WIm Wenders film The Soul of A Man singing several numbers written by J B Lenoir.
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I love this post. It has brought back so many memories of music at different times in my life. Music does get “into” you somehow and becomes part of you. One listen to a song that came out when I was a teenager instantly transports me back in time. I am that girl again with all of her feelings, her youthful essence, her searching for herself, her dreams for the future. What a wonderful gift music is. It is a time machine, it is a teacher, it stirs our soul, it breaks our heart, it lifts us up, it gets us through hard times, it celebrates through good times, it is a a companion, it is a reminder, it is a voice for justice, and it is our stress reliever, it is our lover, it is our memory, and so so much more.
Wonderful post here, as always. I love visiting your site for the wide array of topics and thoughts you inspire here. Thank you for your generosity and your splendid writing.
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