In Canada, with the winters often lasting into spring (as has been
the case this year) many folks like to crank up the radio and
listen to them thar blues. Sometimes a sad song like..."They call
it Stormy Monday and Tuesday is just as bad..." and often the
pounding of the guitar and the wailing of the harmonica is just
about enough to drive away the winter snow.

I recall being in a nightclub in Chicago (I was twenty-something,
long hair, beard and writing a regular music review for a small
music-art publication). I knew blues legend John Lee Hooker
was performing, so clipped my article about him and that worked
so well to get an introduction to a blues legend. But you know what - musicians are pretty much ordinary folk like the rest of us, they simply have focused on their craft and love performing.
And don't mind the cloud of smoke and the ongoing smell of booze.  Billie Holiday lived a brief life, but cut a swath of success
during the music harvest of her life. Sadly, drugs and alcohol
consumption has often been the intruder into the lives of many
well known musicians. Even Elvis.

The Blues have a connection to hard times, prison life, doing
without, walking by the railroad, wanting to tell, in song - to
anyone who would listen - how bad it feels when you are down
and out, and nobody wants to be your friend. Those are the blues.

And still, by some strange miracle, the lyrics often offer relief
(for a time) from the daily struggle, from them thar blues.

Perhaps those that sing the blues are able to get the world off
their shoulders and want to tell the world how the glow of the
lights and booze and the cigarette smoke fueled the music,
offering a temporary shelter in a nightclub to sing and sing about
sad events. Losing someone. Hoping a boxcar. Crying...

Ok, I am just a bystander. I like to listen to the blues. I recognize the sorrow. And I just know that these special lyrics
come  from somewhere deep and dark and painful and the music
becomes part of the recovery process, for them that got -
them thar blues.