The 'blues' can be imitated, but they can't be duplicated

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The 'blues' can be imitated, but they can't be duplicated
April 11, 2011
By John Huotari
The Oak Ridger

It's a uniquely American form of music born of slavery, despair, and wretched work conditions.

More than a century old, it's inspired rock superstars such as Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones, as well as countless late-night jams in smoke-filled bars.

But the blues -- with its popular 12-bar, three-chord structure -- is deceptively simple, according to a local musician.

Playing it right requires a certain feeling, tone, and musical timing, said Henry T. Perry, an Oak Ridge business owner and longtime harmonica player.

"If a man's not had the blues, you can't play the blues," Perry told the Rotary Club of Oak Ridge recently. "You can imitate it, but you can't duplicate it."

Decades ago, black blues musicians in the South could use their talents to escape brutal farm labor, Perry said. But the competition was fierce because the performers could earn $5 a day playing music, compared to the $2 a week they might collect from farm work that dehumanized and imprisoned.

Slavery existed elsewhere, including in the Caribbean, but the blues only developed in the United States.

"This was a form of expression that those slaves put together to express their feelings," said Perry, who plays harmonica with Knoxville blues and jazz band Slow Blind Hill and is also president of Oak Ridge-based HME Inc.

Perry said many aspiring blues musicians made their mark in Memphis, a proving ground.

"That seemed to be the jumping-off point," he said.

Success in Memphis could lead to gigs in big cities farther north, such as Chicago and Kansas City.

During his presentation, Perry focused on more than a dozen blues musicians from Tennessee, most of them dead now: Big Walter Horton, Junior Wells, Memphis Slim, and Bessie Smith, for example. They hailed from Knoxville, Chattanooga, Jackson, or West Tennessee, and played guitar, harmonica, and piano.

They were, at times, hard-drinking womanizers, innovators, and great writers, telling stories of lost love and broken lives and performing songs with evocative titles like "Sloppy Drunk" and "Hard-Headed Woman."

"It's all singing about hard times," Perry said. "Sometimes you have the blues because your wife or girlfriend left you, and sometimes you have the blues because she came back."

There was the occasional happy song, though.

There is a mystery to the music, Perry said.

"There are no rules in this thing," he said. "Good music sounds good."

John Huotari can be contacted at (865) 220-5533.
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