Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

In the next stage of a low-intensity war of extreme pointlessness, in which telemeister has decided to pit his preference for bottleneck blues against mine for rock the louder, bastard offspring of the delta, I present here, the caddyman guide to musical development.

As told by Mr Roll and Mr Woogie, both of whom have since left the business (though the latter's partner, Mr Boogie still tours the dance halls).

Oncepowntahm there was down in the mouth of Old Man River hisself, down on the very delta, a sound they called the Blues. The Blues done lost his wife, his job, had kicked his dog and his liver was suing him for abuse. Nonetheless, people were mighty impressed by Ole Blue, and one day they up and walked him up to a place called Nworleens where he done come close to killin’ hisself on Comfort, so sad was the boy.

Any road up came the day when Ole Blue opened his sad old eyes and there he was, wandered clean up the ways to Chicago. Lost his bottleneck on the way (mebbe to pay his fare) and then got hisself a job. Poor Olde Blue still was depressed awhiles though, but he hung on in there.

Some years passed, and despite it all, Ole Blue got fat on good corn from the prairie; made a little money and got into business for hisself. Sad enough to report, the market wasn’t what he thought it was, and he took hisself a younger business partner and formed the trading concern of Rhythm and Blues. Thanks to Mr Rhythm they jollified their business a mite and soon the bubblegum and pepsi-cola brigade made ‘em richer than Croesus. Course, Ole Blue was still depressed, so when he got drunk again and lost his stake in the company on a turn of cards to a pair of shysters no one was real surprised.

Ole Blue still plays guitar, and sometimes he picks out the bottleneck and goes back to his roots. People still like him, that nice old man, but they buys their music from his old company, now trading as Rock’n’Roll them fancy shysters who done took Ole Blue an’ his buddy Rhythm fer all they had. Course, they kept the old name fer awhiles, then sold it on as R&B. At least no-one associates Ole Blue with that no more.

Anyways, the world don’t generally like mean folks who do old fellers out a what’s theirs by rights, and some years later, them boys, Rock and Roll got their comeuppance. They was out enjoyin’ their ill-gotten gains when they slipped further off the rails. Mr Rock didn’t know where to draw the line and soon was hanging around with ladies of ill repute named Mary Jane, and mekkin’ loud noises late at night and gettin’ picked up by the law.

Mr Roll left soon after, leaving Mr Rock on his own. Somehow he still keeps on going, getting louder an’ louder. But his voice is goin, now.

Ole Blue’s still down on the delta, mind, and occasionally he meets up with his old friend rhythm an’ they kicks out a tune for the old days.

People still like Ole Blue.

Next: By which I mean "if I can ever be bothered"; how Folk emigrated, got sunburnt and hung-over and became bluegrass. Then the story of how he bought some cows, got depressed and ended up in Tennessee, distilling whiskey he couldn’t drink and slowly becoming country after his liver gave out.