How I fell in love with the blues

I was never into the blues that much. I listened to a bit of Roy Buchanan and Rory Gallagher but only as accidental overspill from rock. I knew the Rolling Stones’s sound came out of their love of the blues but what they added was more important (to me) than what they took. And then there was Eric Clapton. In common with a discerning portion of the British population, I loathed Clapton after his drunken endorsement of Enoch Powell’s rivers-of-blood speech. Even if I’d somehow let that slide, I could never forgive him for ‘Tears in Heaven’ which was like having a bucket of oversweetened bilge water poured over one’s head. Musically, Clapton hasn’t come up with anything interesting for at least 40 years so why anyone showed up at his annual plod-alongs at the Royal Albert Hall is an enduring mystery. Overall, no one has done more than Clapton to turn British people off the blues.

I liked it when jazz musicians played the blues, especially if the word was embedded in the title of a tune – ‘When Will the Blues Leave?’ (Ornette Coleman), ‘Blues for a Reason’ (Chet Baker), ‘The Hard Blues’ (Julius Hemphill) – but as a distinct musical genre the blues never quite got through to me. I liked bluesness as a musical ingredient and liked some of the names – Howlin’ Wolf, Son House – more than their music. Obviously I loved Dylan’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’ but listening to McTell himself was a come-down after the Dylan song. Then, a few years ago, my wife and I drove with friends from Austin, Texas, down to Mississippi – and nothing really changed. Geographically, the Delta was a revelation – the way it just lay there, like a kind of spatial waiting – but we didn’t go to any gigs.