Guy Reams (00:00.59)
Today is day 190, the walkin blues.
Guy Reams (00:31.406)
So in 1941 in Robbinsville, Mississippi, Sunhouse sat down in a recording studio with his steel guitar and recorded a session of blues songs that would be preserved in the Library of Congress. And they're there today. Many people, I provided a link in my blog, have taken that Library of Congress recording and released it on YouTube or on Apple Music so you can download and listen to Sunhouse's original
1941 Library of Congress recordings. There was a movement at the time, and it still kind of happens today, but it was really more aggressive then, and that was to record and preserve history, art, and literature at a snapshot in time that we could preserve for future generations. I'm certainly glad they did, because they were able to capture this very imperfect, yet perfect, representation of the blues in the South of the time.
And so these recordings of Sunhouse are indeed very precious. On that day though, they captured more than just Sunhouse and his guitar. They captured the walk -in blues. No person, no song, no painting, no order has ever captured this specific feeling better than Sunhouse. Many artists have covered this song over the years. The Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton, and many more have covered this.
this walk in blues. And it's because they have also felt this feeling and had no other way to better represent it than to represent it as the walk in blue. So if you have heartbreak, you have tough times, you're feeling tired, if the deal with struggles of the day that other people can relate to, you have to get doing something you just don't feel like doing. Are you tired of being rejected? Is somebody trying to steal your jelly roll? Well,
you have the walking blues. And sometimes there's just no other cure than to know you've got the walking blues. And so the song by Sunhouse absolutely captures that. It starts with, well, I got up this morning feeling around for my shoes. Know about that. I got the walking blues. I said, I got up this morning. I was feeling around for my shoes. I said, you know about that now. I got the walking blues. The blues ain't nothing but a low down, shake and chill.
Guy Reams (02:57.678)
If you ain't had them, I hope you never will. Oh, the blues is a low down old aching chill. If you ain't had them boys, I hope you never will. So, and then in the song, it talks about a whole lot of stuff. Some of it funny, some of it cultural references to the blues. Some of them about stealing his girl. Some of them about people just rejecting him because of who he was. Sometimes just feeling bad and just...
feeling bad, right? It's okay just to feel bad, right? It's interesting how we live in a society where everybody has to be up all the time. Well, sometimes you're just not up, man. Sometimes you're just freaking not great. So sometimes it's okay to just recognize that it's okay to feel bad when the sun is going down or when the sun is going up and that there's nobody there to throw your arms around you and you're just by yourself. So anyway.
That's the walk in blues. I was feeling a little down this morning. So as it picked me up, I decided to break out, break myself out some good old sun house. Thank you.