I’m back to finish my love letter to Texas by recognizing the Lone Star State’s contribution to the blues. I love the blues and you know that if you read my post on slide guitar. Some of the blues legends to emerge from deep in the heart of Texas: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Leadbelly, Lightin’ Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thorton, Albert Collins, Freddie King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Johnny and Edgar Winter, ZZ Top, Janis Joplin, Doyle Bramhall II, and Los Lonely Boys, among others. Let’s take a look at some of these folks.
As I read about the lives and deaths of some of the early blues musicians, it really pained me to hear about the intense suffering many endured. Blues music was born as a way to express and communicate the everyday life of poor African-Americans living in the South at the end of the 19th century. A folk tradition born from the creative soul of a people who suffered the unimaginable, the blues gave voice to the voiceless. While most good blues really touches that part of our soul that knows deeply what it means to hurt, there is a sound in those early songs that is truly haunting in its ability to convey the human condition at its most vulnerable.
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