just an unappreciated blues singer circa 1919

just an unappreciated blues singer circa 1919

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

Someday Beyoncé will accumulate 100 million dollars inspired by your efforts and segue your innovations in music into superstardom. Mean while park cars between gigs and make a guitar out of an old wooden box with fishing line and a knife for a fretboard. Tend bar between sets and try not to get knived after your act is done.

Every blues man since 1900 stole from the guy before him. Covers they call it. Change a word or two, make your birth date ten years older for the record guys from the Smithsonian and you are an originator. Then move North far from Mississippi. To Chicago or New York. Become a colorful Southern bluesman.

There is no original blues form or artist. It's the sadness of life over a century or two moved from South to North in America from 1850 to 1967. The sadness of life as experienced by American negroes and later covered by mainstream white artists and made respectable.

Blues man don't be cynical about Beyoncé. Bessie Smith paid her dues for Beyoncé to arrive. Everyone is a cover of someone else and everyone is just trying to thrive in the time they have left.