True Blues – An Irishman’s Diary about music and war

I have a bad habit this time every year, when the annual flier from Monaghan’s Harvest Blues Festival arrives, of going through the line-up for any mention of physical infirmity among the performers.

Alas for musical stereotyping, I rarely find one now. The days of Blues singers being called Blind Lemon Jefferson or Peg Leg Howell are long gone. In line with the shocking number of rock stars living to old age these days, even Mississippi troubadours seem to be enjoying much improved health.

Other conventions have declined too. As laid down some years ago in a very funny manifesto called “Rules for the Blues” (look it up), the cities of Chicago, New Orleans, and St Louis may retain a competitive edge in producing the particular kind of misery required by the genre.

Also, the state of Mississippi continues to have a leg-up (peg or otherwise). But the aforesaid rules specifically exclude “Hawaii, or any place in Canada” as legitimate Blues locations. Whereas I see that this year’s line-up includes the Jordan Patterson Band from Ontario. So much for tradition.

Implied ill-health apart, nicknames of any kind are much scarcer in the music than they once were. At the very least, lacking a recognised disability, Blues musicians used to stress their deviation from average human size. They were called “Little Willie” or “Big Willie”, rarely just “Willie”. But it must be a sign of or our increasingly sensitive world that even Blues singers are now celebrated for who they are, not for their shape.

The only nickname I can find among this year’s performers, in fact, is that of Leo “Bud” Welch, which is hardly a classic.

On the plus side, he is from Mississippi. And he also illustrates another classic rule of the Blues, which still appears sacrosanct.

Traditionally, this the only music genre in which that ultimate infirmity – old age – is an advantage.

So sure enough, according to the festival programme, Leo “Bud” was unknown outside his home town as recently as two years ago. But he was only 82 then. Now, as an 84-year-old rising star, he’s ready for fame.

Heroism

The Harvest Blues Festival begins tomorrow and runs until Sunday (see harvestblues.ie). But elsewhere in Monaghan this weekend, there is a very notable milestone that – to my knowledge – is not being marked in any formal way.

It involves a man named Thomas Hughes, whose life could be the subject of a Blues song. It certainly had many of the classic elements: poverty, alcohol, and physical disability included. Where it diverged from the genre, perhaps, was that it also featured at least one moment of great heroism.

Hughes was a soldier of the first World War, who fought not for king or country, probably, but because he was in his late 20s at the time and without work. Even so, he must have a talent for fighting. Or maybe it was the courage of desperation that, on September 3rd, 1916, made him storm a German machine gun post at Guillemont, single-handedly.

He was already wounded from an attack earlier in the day. Despite which, and being shot several more times during the assault, he killed the gunner, seized the weapon that had been causing carnage, and took prisoners.

That astonishing feat earned him a Victoria Cross, presented in London the following year. But his accumulated war wounds (17, by one account) meant he never walked easily again. And after the war, his British military record also sat uneasily in his native Monaghan, by then severed from most of Ulster by an unwanted Border.

How much this contributed to the impoverishment of Hughes’s later years I don’t know. But when he next hit the headlines, in 1924, it was as the defendant in a court case for poitín making. Police had found “nine pints” at his home. And his claims to be a teetotaller notwithstanding, they further suggested he had consumed an unspecified quantity.

Centenary

If his health was poor, so were his finances. Even the medal went in the end. After he died in 1942, a surviving sister had to sell it.

There are belated plans in Monaghan to erect a plaque in his memory, although the date and location remain to be decided. It won’t be in place for this weekend’s centenary, anyway. Had his heroics been in another war, they might at least have been commemorated in a song by now. But, pending the “Thomas Hughes Blues” perhaps, that hasn’t happened yet either.