An Irishman's Diary

THAT HARBINGER of autumn, a flier for the Monaghan Harvest Blues Festival, arrived in my letter box recently. And reviewing the typically impressive line-up, I was struck, as I am almost every year now, by how healthy the performers all seem.

No doubt it was exaggerated, even in the worst of times. But physical infirmity used to be so common in Blues music as to seem almost a requirement for those entering the profession. Certainly, it was not something to hide: unlike, say, in boxing, another poor man’s game, where an ailment might adversely affect your chances of a licence.

There was never any such problem with the Blues. Assuming you were a competent guitar or harmonica player, then having a recognised bodily impairment only added to your credibility. Indeed, as a genre that celebrated the triumph of the human spirit over disability, Blues music arguably paved the way for the Paralympics.

Visual impairment was probably most typical of the phenomenon. From Blind Lemon Jefferson to Blind Mississippi Morris, a long line of blues performers are assumed to have compensated for sight loss through heightened sensitivity of fingers and ears.

As Bob Dylan put it, “nobody can sing the Blues like Blind Willie McTell”. But deficiency of limb was not an uncommon condition either. One thinks of the Georgia-born guitar picker Peg Leg Howell, who lost his original leg to diabetes, or of his nickname-sake, the singer and harmonica player Peg Leg Sam.

The latter was born plain Arthur Jackson, until losing a limb in what the biographies say was an unspecified “hoboing accident” in 1930. I’m guessing this involved a freight train. If so it would have been the quintessential Blues accident, rivalled only perhaps by one involving an alligator.

Credibility didn’t always require anything as dramatic as that. Mere extremes of body size were, and still are, widely recorded in Blues names. But of course, for the many performers called “Big” something, one can often read “wide” or “clinically obese” (not that tact is the norm in Blues nicknames, as the popularity of “Fats” indicates).

As for the equally common preface “Little”, applied to, among a plethora of others, Little Willie Littlefield, I’m unaware of any cases of actual dwarfism. The implication of growth stunted by poor diet or hard living was usually enough.

Speaking of hard living, there are several competing versions of how Lead Belly acquired that nickname, ranging from his being shot in the stomach to his impressive capacity for drinking moonshine. All are equally plausible, given his life story.

But as I say, there may sometimes have been exaggeration involved in names. So it was, one suspects, with Cripple Clarence Loften. He was born with a limp, apparently. And maybe it was a bad limp. Yet before becoming a Blues performer, he made a living as a tap dancer, so “cripple” must have been overstating it a bit.

IN ANY CASE, by contrast, the line-up bound for Monaghan next week do not appear to have an ailment between them. They would represent the triumph of Obamacare, if it weren't way too soon for that. But never mind ailments, most of them don't even have nicknames.

The exceptions include Lazy Lester, a veteran Louisiana blues man who played with many of the greats including “Lightnin” Hopkins (so-titled, by the way, not because it hit him, although that would be a classic Blues accident too, but because of the power of his performances).

Lazy Lester’s moniker also refers to his playing style, rather than to any chronic indolence.

And his aside, the only other nickname in next week’s line-up is Terry “Harmonica” Bean, so-called, prosaically, after the instrument. Bean is from Mississippi and, although he’ll be doing an acoustic set here, often plays with a band named the “Cornlickers”. Which name might hint at an interesting psycho-social disorder, perhaps caused by Vitamin D deficiency, on the part of those involved.

Except that this just is a wilful misspelling of the kind in which the Blues delights. The cornlickers alluded to are in fact a range of home-made alcoholic drinks of the kind that may have earned Lead Belly his nickname.

You might conclude that hard living, at least, is still fashionable in Blues circles. But maybe that too is changing. I’ve been listening to Bean’s 2010 live album with the said Cornlickers and, in between songs, he admits that prolonged witness to the effect of his grandfather’s moonshine on others as a child put him off alcohol in general for life. He never touches it now.

It seems, therefore, that even veteran Mississippi Bluesmen are looking after their health these days. And yet, despite the apparent absence of adversity, the music still thrives.

Then again, I suppose, you can find adversity anywhere if you look hard enough. Take the band Mike and the Mellotones, one of the headline acts next week, who early in their career had to overcome the twin handicaps of being white and from Holland and still, somehow, managed to make it as a top Blues act.

The Harvest Blues Festival runs from September 7th to 9th. ( www.harvestblues.ie)