Blues-born -- An Excerpt

by Tina Jens

The dark was as deep as a coal mine, and just as echoey. Somewhere out there in the black night a hoot owl called. He wasn't talkin' to me, but I jumped anyway. It's not like I've never heard an owl before, even though I am a city girl, but that was in a zoo, and when you're sittin' on the cold ground, alone, in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest light just a faint glow in a farmhouse window a mile away, your nerves kinda stand on edge. I knew what time it was, but I hit the light button on my watch just to draw a little comfort out of the faint green glow.

11:22

Thirty-eight minutes to go. I patted my guitar case reassuringly. I'm not normally the jumpy type, but out in the country the darkness is BIG. In the city, it's never truly black outside; God just dims the lights, like they do in restaurants come the dinner-hour. You've always got streetlights, and car lights, and neon shop signs. But out here in the country, the blackness took a heavy and hulking shape, like a monster whose tail stretched on for miles. You could feel the darkness pressing down on you, like it might smother you at any moment.

Full of nervous energy, I flipped the power button for my battery amp on, just to check if it was still juiced, then shut it off. I wanted to conserve its energy. I didn't know how much I'd need later.

You're probably asking yourself what a girl like me was doing sitting out at the crossroads with my guitar by my side at midnight. Well, hell, it worked for Robert Johnson!

See, all great Blues musicians are rumored to have sold their souls for their talent. In fact, some folks say you can't play the Blues, lessun you made a deal with Devil, 'cause the Blues is the Devil's music, and you just can't find the chords if you haven't shook hands with the man. I didn't know if that was true, 'cause Son House was a preacher, and he played the Blues just fine. But the Devil had made Robert Johnson the best, and I wanted to be next in line.

I didn't know for sure if the Devil would make the same deal with a runaway city chick with an electric guitar -- but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. And I'd hitchhiked all the way from Chicago to the outskirts of Greenwood, Mississippi -- to the very same place Robert Johnson struck his deal -- to find out.

That'd been almost seventy years ago -- that Johnson struck his deal, I mean -- and I didn't know if the Devil was hangin' out at the same places these days, but I had my fingers crossed.

Even if Johnson did invent the Blues as we know it... yeah, I know, some folks say Willie Brown taught him everything he knew, but if that's so, how come he isn't famous? Anyways, like I said, Johnson was the King of the Blues, but he still died young and penniless. And that wasn't the deal I was aiming to make. Devil won't give you talent and wealth too -- one soul isn't enough payment for that. But if he gave me talent, I had the wealth part all figured out.

Guys with guitars are a dime a dozen, but you can count on one hand the number of chicks who can, or could, really play guitar: Memphis Minnie, Shawn Colvin, Bonnie Raitt, Rory Block and on a good day, Roseanne Cash. A little blonde chick on an electric axe that could outplay Clapton, Hendrix and Page -- all at the same time -- now that's something booking agents and audiences ought to pay big bucks for. I figured I'd be on Letterman and Leno in no time. A record deal couldn't be far behind...

If you'd like to read the rest of the story, you can order the book More Monsters from Memphis at your favorite bookstore.

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