Why I Play the Blues

Carlos Santana

You have no doubt read my phrase I coined about a year ago, "It doesn't hurt when you play the blues."  I thought I would post on the concept of the blues specifically and why I chose to add this music genre to my catalog of music I practice and perform.  I began to play the guitar at the age of 7 years, learning initially on an acoustic guitar.  At ten, I received an electric guitar for Christmas-- a made in Japan red copy of a Fender Stratocaster with a chrome, metal pickguard, an "ash tray" cover on the bridge and a wammy bar assembly.  I used this guitar in my first band in which I sang lead and played guitar as a sixth grade boy.

After performing as an acoustic-rock singer/guitarist and impressionist in high school, and working as an entertainer at a few dinner houses when I graduated, I began to write and sing my own songs in churches, schools, camps and weddings at the age of 18.  I continued in that vain until recent years when my illness became an impedance to my ability to perform.  Over the years, I was a closet blues player, learning the blues scales and trying to learn to bend the strings to sound like a rock guitarist.  In the late eighties, I began more intentionally to play acoustic leads, sometimes relying on blues scale and improvising in that manner.  Then, in 2009, when I was about to release my third studio album, I wrote a blues song called, "Parkinson's Blues."  This song gave me the chance to make the blues my own.

It was in the summer of 2010 that I began to focus on the blues almost entirely, practicing blues guitar for hours, daily.  I would play Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Albert King and John Lee Hooker CD's and play along with them, improvising guitar runs in an attempt to match these artists.  To this day, playing along with Blues CD's is one of my favorite pastimes, and a key to my learning new guitar techniques and skills.

Over the past year, and up until the present, I have purchased a number of Blues CD's and expanded the list of artists I enjoy and from whom I am learning. Those artists include:  T-Bone Walker, BB King, Susan Tedeschi, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Lightening Hopkins, Eric Clapton and numbers of other artists too numerous to mention.

I love this music style because it has a soul in it that speaks to my deepest sensitivities.  The guitar, bass, drums and keys all work together to build a wonderful rhythmic feel that is truly unique to any other form of music.  The chord structure is simple, often three major chords including the I, IV and V chords, or Tonic, Sub-dominant and Dominant.  A popular aspect of the format is what we call the "12-bar blues."  This is a chord structure that can be played and repeated again and again as musicians join together to improvise in a commonly understood framework.  Within this format, the artist is able to let their words and guitar riffs explain the angst the artist feels about life's ups and downs.  Often the lyrics focus on economic hardship, loss of employment or an ongoing search for a good woman lost along the way through life's struggles.  These songs often state, "I've been looking for my baby, somebody tell me where she can be." (from: Thy Sky is Crying).

The blues are a truly American form of music, loved throughout the world by a variety of groups of people.  Much of what we know in rock, country and folk music today developed as a result of the blues.  The guitar's place in popular music gained a great foothold as a result of the blues.

I love the blues for the lyrics about the human struggle expressing ideas about the loss of a love, financial difficulties and religious zeal.  Singing these lyrics, I identify with my own life experience as I let my feelings out about the changes that came into my life with a rare form of Parkinson's that took away my freedom to drive, work and take part in sports activities.  When I sing the blues, I am able to express a deep yearning that resulted from the losses brought about due to this neurological disease.

I passionately love the guitar aspect of the blues.  There is so much to learn and it requires adding new patterns, positions and techniques that I had only touched the surface of earlier in my life. Prior to the blues, I played finger-style folk, rock 'n roll and country music. These were my trademark styles since I was a young boy.  The blues are a completely new challenge and have forced me to practice hours and hours each week in order to learn and improve.  The dirty sound of my electric guitar played through a tube amp, as I bend the strings and create a crying sound on the strings, is very satisfying in letting the feelings flow from my fingers and voice.

I have come to appreciate a broader range of blues styles the longer I play and sing the blues.  Originally, I enjoyed Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy the most.  After focusing on this music for 15 or 16 months, I am now including T-Bone Walker, Lightning Hopkins, Robert Johnson and Eric Clapton, which represents a bigger swath of blues styles.  B.B. King has been a greater area of focus, which includes a good deal of brass and jazz feel when contrasted with Clapton and S.R. Vaughan.

"It doesn't hurt when you play the blues" is a phrase I came up with to describe how the blues are a form of prayer or a cry of the heart.  It is difficult to put it into words-- but the blues is a great form of music, which by its nature makes the guitar and the guitarist king.  But the blues are also a matter of the heart, and ultimately, all music is about the human spirit and allowing your singing and playing to share your deepest hopes, fears, triumphs, beliefs and passions with the listening audience. -- Guitar Man

Stevie Ray Vaughan with a Fender Stratocaster Guitar