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Reviews are in for Tina L. Jens' THE BLUES AIN'T NOTHIN' |
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Quotes and reviews* by:
* The reviews contained herein are used with permission of the author and publisher. |
Author of Black House (with Stephen King) and The Hellfire Club "Exactly like the music in which it is soaked, The Blues Ain't Nothin' jumps, sings, soars, sighs and exults. This novel is bursting with energy and charm."
Tananarive Due Author of The Living Blood and My Soul to Keep "Tina Jens writes about the world of the Blues she loves with sass, skill and old-fashioned scares. So put on your favorite Blues album, pour yourself a snifter of Wild Turkey, and listen as the sounds from The Blues Ain't Nothin': Tales From the Lonesome Blues Pub leap off of the pages and make you feel right at home."
P.D. Cacek
August 4, 2002 The Blues Ain't Nothin': Tales Of The Lonesome Blues Pub by Tina L. Jens is an ably written novel set on Chicago's North Side, and features a blues club haunted by ghosts of blues legends. The eccentric regulars are a bit scary in their own right too, in this unique and unusual novel of music, lives, love, and the special emotional evocation that can only come from true blues. If you've ever enjoyed a genuine Chicago blues session, then read The Blues Ain't Nothin' and be prepared for total engagement from cover to cover!
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Dark Echo August 7, 2002 (#12)
In the first section we are introduced to the Lonesome Blues Pub on Chicago's North Side and its owner, Miss Sarah. She runs the club with the help of her 10-year-old daughter Little Mustang Sally, some ageless bluesmen, and a friendly ghost. Jayhawk, the specter, serves as loyal babysitter, bartender, busboy, and occasional protection from less-amiable spirits drawn to the haunted club. For Little Mustang supernatural entities are part of life, just like the music and its players. She's literally been born to play the blues. Section two jumps ahead eight years, as Little Mustang is evolving into the eighteen-year-old Mustang. As much as she relies on Jayhawk, Sarah lives with a fear of the malevolent spirits. When her daughter isn't around, nasty ghosts prey on her. Only the intervention of a spunky guest ghost can clear up the mess, but nothing can make Sarah fearless. When a chance for love in the form of a traveling salesman arrives, she faces a choice between her daughter's and her own happiness. These first episodes make up more than half the book and -- with the exception of some bits of repeated information that should have been snipped out -- they function well enough together in novel form. The final three tales (along with a short first-person epistle and an epilogue) belong entirely to Mustang, her bluesman friends/father-figures, and a variety of ghosts. This is a book that grows as it goes. There are some problems in the first episode -- a lack of fluid writing and overly intrusive dialect. (Jens has a good ear for accurate idiom, but at places -- especially with the use of a lot of apostrophes -- it's a bit too much of a good thing.) Like a performance, the first set sometimes doesn't measure up to later ones. But by the time the reader is into the second section, the mojo's working. By the end you've met memorable characters (dead and alive), experienced some mild chills, seen tricky predicaments untangled, and discovered some drop dead funny spots (pun intended) without Jens' dropping a note. If it all sounds a bit too cute for your tastes, think again. Yes, there are some endearing ectoplasmic entities here. Like Thorne Smith in his Topper books, Jens has a delightful sense of fun with her spirits (both liquid and fantastic). Jayhawk and other revenants like Memphis Minnie, and Robert Johnson are, like Thorne's George and Marion Kerby, more than just apparitions who act as auxiliaries. They are as fully developed as the human characters. Jens also deftly provides enough information along the way to bring readers with little blues?knowledge up to snuff while not bogging her text down for those more in tune with her subject. Most importantly, Jens faces the problems inherent in her plot -- race and a reasonable explanation for ghosts -- without copping out. She offers viable answers without a candy-coating. Mustang Sally, her ghostly and human companions, and the Lonesome Blues Pub have possibilities in the tradition of numerous science fictional saloon stories, but with high appeal for female readers. So far, she's not met the bluesman (or -men) of her dreams, but she can cool off a bar full of raunchy males -- both human and not -- made amorous with the Lovesick Blues then defeat the ghost of Bloody Fingers McKrackin. ("I was playin' the Blues when they was red-hot, dirty, and ain't no white folks allowed. I've EATEN better wimmins than you. Usually in curry sauce. Helps tenderize the tough parts.") Verdict: If a mass market publisher that could tap the right market would take a chance and author Jens could take her creation into true novel form without losing the charm of her short stories, there might be a chance for a fantasy franchise series. At the very least, Jens should share more of Mustang Sally's adventures in short form. THE BLUES AIN'T NOTHIN' isn't high art, but it does reveal something about human nature and music while remaining refreshing, appealing, and a whole lot of fun.
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Brian Hodge
"Tales of the Lonesome Blues Pub," the book is subtitled, and indeed, the setting here is almost as restricted as that of a one-act play. For changes of pace and color, Jens instead relies on the world of the living and the dead to mosey in through the doors. In other words, "If you build it, they will come ... and they'll probably be bringing raunchy guitars." Structurally, this is an odd duck, a collection of stories and novellas (most of which had to stand on their own in previous publications) that, arranged chronologically, gel into a pretty cohesive novel. Spanning nearly twenty years, the novel's through-point is Sally, the daughter of Miss Sarah, original owner of the Lonesome Blues Pub on Chicago's North Side. In the various episodes (set in 1981, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1999, and 2000), we see her evolve from ten-year-old Little Mustang into the full-grown Mustang Sally, destined to not only run the club her mother founded, but play the blues herself. Like her creator, Sally may be a white girl with blond hair, but it's a wholly credible transformation, which is punctuated by all sorts of run-ins with the staples of blues lore: ghosts, hellhounds, devils in long frock coats, and plenty of lowdown, sweet-talking, two-timing men. By the turn of the century, Sally has become extremely adroit at handling them all. Truth be told, the supernatural elements, while abundant, are generally handled with a very light touch. They're not so much genuinely menacing as entertainingly picturesque. Weightier are the strictly human elements: the growing estrangement between mother and daughter, the racial tensions of white people involved with black music, and the surprisingly touching and heartbreaking portrayal of a harmonica player beset by the brain damage deliberately inflicted on him as a child. There's plenty of warmth, too, in the surrogate family that's come together to raise and mentor the fatherless Mustang Sally, from the elderly retired bluesmen Old George and Ratman, to the friendly resident ghost Jayhawk, to the spirits of such dead legends as Memphis Minnie and Robert Johnson, who stop by to lend a transparent hand when needed. One aspect of everything I especially enjoyed was just how deglamorized it all was. Whether wholly fictitious or historically recounted, the lives of blues players, for all their boisterous good-timing, come off as sad and lonely. As for the pub itself, it's constantly assailed by money woes and teetering on the brink of insolvency ... so much so that, for me, this is what strained credibility more than the haunts. In the real world, if the least of your apparitions was a ghost bussing tables and levitating shot glasses to and from the bar, I'd think the least of your worries would be an empty till. Still, one of the greatest compliments anyone can pay a work of fiction is to assert the reality the author has lent to its people and places. If I walked into the Lonesome Blues Pub, I would know it immediately. And with plenty of tales surely left to be told, I'm looking forward to going back.
Don D'Ammassa
Gahan Wilson
One of the most satisfying subgenres in fantasy is that concerning urban bars or cozy small-town taverns or country inns: those places that are a warm glow in the night's darkness backed by the comforting sounds of human conversation or even -- if one is particularly lucky -- a little music to get the chilled heart pumping. These places are among humankind's most generous inventions, for they offer the weary, lonely wonderer not only a place of rest and refuge from the cruel, cold city streets or the damp and frightening darkness of the forest, but they offer food and drink and the companionship of one's own kind. Using a snug oasis as a background for bizarre and fantastic events works so well because the coziness of such environments contrasts so effectively with weird intrusion. The relaxation that comes from having found what one believes to be a safe place makes one all that much more vulnerable to startlement and fright. The Blues Ain't Nothin' (by Tina L. Jens, The Design Image Group, Darien, Ill.; trade paperback, 208 pp., $15.95) takes place in a very special kind of supposedly safe retreat: the Lonesome Blues Pub located in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago's North Side. In common with all the many other such institutions in that part of the world, it opens its doors to the public at 8 in the evening, starts the music at 9:30, lets the sets run on until 1:15, then closes down at 1:30 AM. When we first encounter this establishment it is run by Miss Sarah who has come to Chicago from Grand Detour -- which I must say is a really great and authentically nutsy midwestern name for a little town -- and who is a single mother of a delightful daughter named Little Mustang because her impregnator and husband-to-be was foolish enough to electrocute himself while celebrating their engagement by playing "Stormy Monday" on an electric guitar in the rain. The clientele of the pub is a mix of trendy yuppies, partying youths, and elderly regulars known as the "felt hats," this latter group most outstandingly represented by such stalwarts as Old George and Ratman, who site from opening to closing in chairs specially reserved for them sipping simple, time-tested beverages and occasionally illuminating the bar's darkness by the soft flashings of their gold-capped teeth ("Can't be a proper blues person without a gold tooth.") This colorful mixture of humanity is alternately firmly controlled and tenderly looked after by the pub's very large bouncer and doorman, Big Ray, and served drinks by waitresses who tend to date blues musicians pretty much because the two groups keep the same odd hours. The thing that sets the Lonesome Blues Pub apart from its competitors is that the place is haunted, primarily and most noticeably by the ever unseen but palpably present phantom of Billy Jay Hawkins, most commonly referred to as Jayhawk, the best blues guitar player in Chicago until he tripped over his power cord and was impaled either by the microphone stand or the whammy bar on his guitar. Accounts vary. Jayhawk is fond of Miss Sarah and in various kindly ways steps in for her dead husband who somehow never manages to find his way back (a touch I found oddly logical), often handling the taped musical selections preceding the live performances and skillfully babysitting Little Mustang -- witnesses observe that the bottle floating in air from which she sucked was carefully tilted in such a way that she wouldn't swallow air along with her milk. And Miss Sarah, as a return courtesy, insists that the lead of any group always play the first number of their opening gig on Jayhawk's beat-up black-and-white Fender guitar which always sits on its special spot on the stage because if you move the instrument it will always mysteriously return. The various ghosts and demons that invade the pub are highly entertaining and range from types as sensational as a serial cannibal killer whose lyrics extend the blues into regions heretofore unexplored --
Got your eyes on my dresser, --to a gentle and convincing portrait of the ghost of the late, great Robert Johnson who made a deal with the Devil to be the greatest blues guitarist and singer ever and is still fleeing the hellhound that leaves round tracks exactly the size of an old 78 record and just as heavily grooved. The cast includes all kinds of folk living and dead, real and made up. There is the spook of the legendary Memphis Minnie undimmed by death, the marvelous blues singer Liz Mandville Greeson who is happily still very much alive and you should hear her sing, and then there is Harpsicrazy, who is frightened of what he calls the rainbow rising in his mind for very good reason. The essential point is that if you read The Blues Ain't Nothin' you will not lack for interesting company. A warm and delightfully entertaining novel and, as if that were not a generous enough gift to us all, Ms. Jens even provides the reader with a Recommended Listening of blues singers' discs just in case you haven't heard the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, Big Time Sarah, Willie Dixon, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tampa Red, and Marvelous Marva Wright at their thumping best. It would be a great pity if you didn't take advantage of it.
HellNotes Book Review January 23, 2003 Like bread and butter, or chocolate and peanut butter, Horror and the Blues are two great tastes that go together. Many of today's horror fans are also into Heavy Metal. But Heavy Metal ain't nothin' but the Blues with the amps turned up until they distort and vocals screamed instead of sung. Blues is the original "devil music," and some even claim you have to sell your soul to play it proper. If the same is true of writing horror fiction, then Satan must have a contract with Tina Jens. The Blues Ain't Nothin' is an episodic novel set at the Lonesome Blues Pub in Chicago, Illinois. (It is based on the real life Chicago club B. L. U. E. S., where lucky participants at the World Horror Convention last year got to attend a mixer. The musical guest of honor was Chicago blues diva Liz Mandville Greeson, who is also a character in the novel. She and the awesome harmonica player Billy Branch and his band, the Sons of the Blues, performed for our delight.) The sign on the door says, "This club is haunted. If you're afraid of ghosts, go away." The main spirit is Jayhawk, a Bluesman who died when the club nearly burned down years ago. Jayhawk is very protective of the proprietor, Miss Sarah, and her daughter "Mustang Sally." He even helps out around the pub, bussing tables and so forth. But he's hardly the only ghost who shows up. In the first episode, set in 1981, Miss Sarah has to deal with a hotshot guitar player who doesn't want to play by Jayhawk's rules. Every band that plays at the Lonesome Blues Pub must play their first set with the house guitar, which was Jayhawk's, or the spirit will mess up their gig by cutting the amps out or other mischievous pranks. The stubborn guitarist won't listen to good advice, so Jayhawk has a field day screwing up his show. But that's nothing compared to the show they get when the huge, darkly clad fellow known as the Preacherman makes the scene. He takes the stage and quite literally raises Hell. The second episode, set in 1989, comprises nearly half of the book. Ghosts have come and gone during Miss Sarah's reign, and not all of them are nice. When a group of particularly nasty spirits causes Miss Sarah to badly cut herself, a stranger comes to her rescue. Miss Sarah starts to fall for the handsome stranger, but her now teenaged daughter Mustang Sally resents him deeply. Miss Sarah calls in Arianna (another real life character, the alter ego of Sephera Giron) to cleanse the bar. Arianna fails and heads for the hills, but the ghost of the greatest female Blues signer of all time, Memphis Minnie, shows up to keep the spirits in line. Miss Sarah throws Mustang Sally a birthday party, inviting bar regulars, Sally's friends and -- against her daughter's wishes -- the stranger. Racially charged comments by the stranger nearly ruin the party, but Miss Sarah runs away with him, leaving her under-aged daughter to run the bar. Episode III, picking up two years later, finds Mustang Sally now running the bar on her own. The ghost of the most legendary figure in Blues, the one and only Robert Johnson, enters the bar. Johnson sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads to gain his remarkable talent. (If you ask me, he made a pretty good deal. Robert Johnson's songs have been covered by everyone from Cream to Led Zeppelin, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and beyond.) At first thrilled to have the undisputed King of the Delta Blues in her establishment, Mustang Sally soon finds herself having to deal with the Hellhound on Johnson's trail. Episode IV, set in 1996, finds Mustang Sally booking Jimmy "That's Mr. Blues To You" Jones. Sally has to stop the show when his lyrics go beyond the pale with horrific descriptions of a man dismembering his baby. In fact, the lyrics remind regular patron Old George of Old Bloody Fingers McKrackin, a Bluesman who wrote songs like "The Burned-Up Body Autopsy Blues" and "Girl, Your Liver Tastes So Fine (In a Sauce of Red Wine)," who was arrested after police discovered the decapitated bodies of over 100 women in his crawlspace. Soon every man in the club has the hots for Sally and she has to find a way to get them under control. They've got the Lovesick Blues, and there's only one cure for that. Episode V, set in 2000, concerns a regular, known as "Harpsicrazy," who hears voices in his head and is convinced people are trying to poison him. He keeps his own bottle at the bar, which he seals off with wax after each visit. He also keeps Susan B. Anthony dollars around to stick in his ears to block out the voices. But when a college kid drops something in his drink, Harpsicrazy goes into a rage and begins to tear the place up. But help is on the way from the spirit realm, and Mustang Sally gets her chance to jam with some of the finest musicians in history. The epilogue ends on a sad note, but how else could it? The Blues is about misery, after all. Jens also provides a bibliography of works she consulted and an excellent recommended listening list for folks who don't know the blues, but would like to. Damn near everything about this novel works. Jens' sense of place, broad knowledge of and enthusiasm for Blues history and shear writing talent combine into as enjoyable a reading experience as I've had all year. Her cast of quirky characters, the living, dead, real and imagined, ring with authenticity. The people in this book became my friends. I felt their joy and their pain, laughed with them and cried for them. Having it end was like saying goodbye to a place I never wanted to leave. Like the music that inspired it, this novel is full of the stuff that makes up life...and death. The only real complaint I could register is that the ending of many of the episodes is somewhat similar, but I was too busy being charmed to pay that any mind. The Blues Ain't Nothin' is more fun than seeing a Gypsy woman and getting a swollen root. I can only hope we'll be treated to the further adventures of Mustang Sally in future tales.
Ride, Sally, ride.
after-words bookstore Newsletter April 13, 2003 Recently nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for best first novel, The Blues Ain't Nothin' showcases (lovingly) the landmark B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted. Well, Jens calls it the Lonesome Blues Pub, but she happily admits that the bar, and many of its staff and patrons, is based largely on the grande dame of Lincoln Park Blues life. The Lonesome Blues Pub was opened by Miss Sarah, back when she had nothing but a little savings, a little girl to raise, and the bittersweet memories of her dead fiancé for company. That little girl grows up to be Mustang Sally, as tough and able a woman as was ever raised by ghosts and Blues. Oh, there are plenty of ghosts to be found in the Lonesome Blues, from famous musicians to hellhounds spitting brimfire. There's love, and heartache, and families struggling to survive fire, puberty, and Mom's new boyfriend. There's plenty of music, classic Blues riffs and Chicago songs and even a few new ones you won't hear anywhere else. But mostly, there's Miss Sarah and Little Mustang. Mother and daughter, and we fall in love with them in every phase from sweet little girl to pitched battle over tight leather pants and snakeskin boots. When you finish this one, you'll want to have a stiff drink and call your mother.
Baryon Magazine #88 Most of what I knew about the blues came from some of the early Rolling Stones records and the Fleetwood Mac in Chicago sessions. Now Tina Jens, a true dyed in the wool blues lover, fills us in with a group of stories about a haunted blues club on the north side of Chicago. Miss Sarah buys an old club and does her best to make a success of a ghost-ridden club where some of the blues greats make their home after they have died. Sarah is doing her best to raise her daughter, Sally, who is given the nickname of Little Mustang. The stories range through Sally’s growth from age eight until the night the ghosts almost destroy the club. Ghosts, blues music, and good story telling fill up this too short volume of tales. Be sure to add Tina Jens and a good dose of the blues to your reading list.
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