Joseph I Wanted to Be a Bluesman

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9914591-1-2
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 162 Seiten

In David Joseph's fourth collection of fiction, I Wanted To Be A Bluesman, he explores human relationships through the Delta-dipped lens of the blues.

Each of the twelve stories in this collection are carefully intertwined with the blues-from Mississippi to Chicago and places in between. Along the way, the bricklayer, priest, car thief, cook, and others are connected through the common thread of the blues. Whether traveling by car towards Clarksdale in searing summer heat or on a train bound for the north, the blues cross borders and play on.

And yet, these aren't so much stories about the blues as they are stories about regular people who are connected to the music through the manner in which the blues have spoken to them and shaped their lives. The music provides the backdrop for their dreams, desires, memories, decisions, uncertainty, secrets, and, in some cases, their chance at redemption.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Joseph, David

Leseproben

I WANTED TO BE A BLUESMAN

E

very time I woke up after a storm, I thought of my brother. We grew up here, in this little fishing village, where the days are long and people’s lives are small. This was the place we were raised, the life we were born into. Dad worked the fishing boats with the men, and Mom taught at the tiny schoolhouse here.

We never left the village, not for anything. There were no trips to the city. No exotic vacations or even dull ones. We shopped at the local market and spent our days and nights in the village. Depending on how you looked at it, we either lived in a detached paradise or an isolated prison. Maybe both. But our contact with the outside world was limited. Dad said we weren’t missing anything.

Our one link to the world beyond our small village was the radio, the strange box with frequencies that sat between our beds, with words and music leaking out of it each night as we went to sleep. Looking back today, with all of our fingertip technology, it’s impossible to fathom just how important it was to have a radio. Without it, we’d never have heard the news or even known what the voice of the president of the United States sounded like. But what the radio brought us more than anything else was music.

This music we listened to on the radio was different from the music we’d heard in school, the classical music we’d heard in school. There was nothing wrong with classical music, of course, but it didn’t speak to us, at least not most of us. And when our teacher placed that needle on a vinyl record in class, we often found ourselves dozing off, lulled to sleep by the syncopated rhythm of the crackling needle, as the record spun.

Listening to music on the radio was just the opposite. It was an awakening, a sonic stimulant, a desperate plea even, and we felt our bodies come to life the moment we heard it. That sound. It was something different. Something new. Something that reflected us, where we were, who we were, how we lived—all without confining us to it. This music was determined and passionate, and it was often played by Black musicians. Today, we’d be told to call them African American, but when we were growing up, they were Black, and we were White.

Sure, there was Sinatra and Bing Cosby and Mel Torme and plenty of White artists. But when we heard Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters or Jimmy Reed steamroll over the airwaves, the windows in our bedroom shook, and so did we. This music had teeth. It had guts. It dripped with sweat, and it bled, just like us.

Our parents didn’t like the music, this music from the Mississippi Delta or Chicago or other parts of America that were foreign to them, and they didn’t particularly like us listening to it. I’m not really sure why, but I’m not going to blame them. Not here and not now. I’m just going to say that they didn’t understand it, and nothing we said could explain it to them. Nothing at all, no matter how hard we tried. My brother told me that they’d never get it. At the time, I didn’t believe him, but he was right.

Sometimes, as we listened to those throaty voices and heard those squealing guitars, we’d lay in the dark, in our beds, and smile. I couldn’t see my brother’s face in the dark, but I didn’t have to see it to know he was smiling. There was just something so satisfying in the music. And even if the songs were about hardship, pain, and the difficulties life might bring, they filled us with hope, left us with a feeling of possibility, which was something that wasn’t easy to come by in our village. You could only get there if you dreamed, really dreamed, and these songs on the radio allowed us to do just that.

Since I knew Mom and Dad weren’t fans of the music we listened to, I would try and keep the volume down to a reasonable level out of respect for them. But my brother would reach over from his bed and twist the dial in the opposite direction. He said the music was meant to be played loud, and that it was our duty to play it loud out of respect for the music. Eventually, Mom would yell for us to turn it down and we would, but not until after my brother had attempted to blow the roof off the place, if only for a moment.

I bought my first guitar when I was fifteen. I’d finally scrounged up enough money from cleaning the fishing boats to buy one. It was an acoustic guitar, made from swamp ash wood, and I was determined to learn how to play the blues. My father couldn’t believe I had chosen to spend my money on a guitar or, rather, “wasted” my money on it as he put it. Mom said I was free to spend it however I wanted, and my brother just laughed.

“You’ll never be able to play that thing,” he said. “Not like those guys. And besides, you’re not Black.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

Although I wanted to tell him he was wrong about me learning to play, I knew I’d have to prove it. That was the only way, and there was no sense arguing with him. There was never any sense arguing with him, about anything, when he had his mind made up. And he had his mind made up about this. As far as he was concerned, I was a fool.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t at all sure I could learn to play the guitar either. After all, there were no musicians in our family, and I’d never displayed any type of musical ability. Of course, I wasn’t Black either and, if that was a prerequisite for being able to play the blues, well, then I was doomed.

For the time being, though, I just decided to keep quiet. What was the use in arguing? It seemed rather pointless, and I would just have to be patient. Nobody in our house believed in me or was going to support me in this pursuit. So, I checked a book out of the public library on how to play the guitar, and I got to work, learning where to place my fingers on the strings. That’s how I did it, and I taught myself. I made sure to learn how to play chords and fingerpick too. Of course, I made tons of mistakes. But one thing I never did was play the guitar when my brother was around. Not ever. He would surely have been merciless, and I wasn’t willing to give him the satisfaction.

Somehow, though, I had already learned those songs, those songs we listened to, and they were now embedded in my soul, way down deep, deeper than I even knew. I could remember them word for word, and I could spot the ache in Muddy Water’s voice or pick out the wail in B.B. King’s guitar. All these sounds had been cataloged in my memory, and I heard them inside my head. I also learned that I had a better ear than I might have thought, and my rhythm wasn’t bad either. I just kept playing, practicing, relentlessly, without mentioning it to anyone.

This was around the time my brother was preparing to graduate from high school. Mom and Dad wanted him to go to college if he wasn’t going to work on the fishing boats, but he had other ideas. He told us that a friend of his, who was one year older than him, had made it to California.

“He says they’re giving away jobs there,” my brother told my parents, who clearly disapproved.

It was one thing to dream of making it to Boston or Chicago, as improbable as that was. But California, that was truly beyond the realm of comprehension, not to mention it being well beyond the moral and spiritual realm my parents had existed in for their entire lives.

“How you planning to get to California?” my father snapped one day.

“Bus ticket. Using the money I saved from working on the fishing boats,” he said. “Since I didn’t waste it on a worthless guitar.”

My father looked at me disapprovingly, and I couldn’t be sure which one of his sons had disappointed him more. He clearly disapproved of California and everything it stood for, but he was in agreement with my brother’s assertion that I had not spent my money wisely.

~~~

The night before my brother left for California, there was a terrible storm outside. We lay in our room, while the thunder crashed, without saying a word. My brother even let me choose the radio station, and he didn’t try and turn it up either. He just sat there in his bed, with his hands behind his head, breathing, pulling the air deep into his lungs and letting it out, while the storm raged outside, and the music played on.

I couldn’t pretend that my brother wasn’t different, different from me that is. He was, and we rarely saw eye to eye. But he was my big brother, and I still idolized him. We’d shared that bedroom in our small house in this little fishing village all our lives. And we’d fallen asleep listening to the radio together every night for as long as I could remember.

“Wanted you to know that you can keep the radio,” he said. “I mean, when I go. It’s yours.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Least I can do, seeing as I’m leaving you here in this boring town.”

“Is that why you’re leaving?” I asked. “Because you’re bored?”

“That and a hundred other reasons,” he said. “Haven’t you been listening to the songs?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” he insisted. “I’ve got to break free, of this place, this life, of Mom and Dad, all of it. I can’t be trapped here, not anymore. It’s like Howlin’ Wolf said, ‘I’m gonna get up in the morning / Hit the Highway 49.’ That’s what I’ve got to do. Hit the highway and head west. I just know it. I can feel it.”

We sat quietly a bit longer. I wasn’t sure what to say, but I’d never heard my brother talk with so much passion. Oh, we’d listened to the songs together,...