Damn Right, Brownsville Has the Blues!

 

by Jim Barton on Wednesday, December 28, 2011 at 2:11am

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     Like a sharecropper letting his voice rise and fall, then break into a falsetto with a field holler crying about the overseer, the heat or the thirst,  Jerry Mchale has much to cry about in his new blog Brownsville Blues.  The first edition of the new blog is expected anno domini 2012, coincidentally during the same calendar year ancient Mayans hinted might be our last on planet Earth.
    

     Early bluesmen were actually verbal bloggers as they chronicled the highs and lows of life, mostly the lows.  Joan Baez, the greatest hispanic folk singer of all time, cleared up one misconception:  "You don't have to be black to sing the blues, " she wrote years ago. 

 

Another misconception is that you have to go down Highway 61 in Mississippi to where it intersects with Highway 49, but that's a lie.  There is just as devilish a crossroad where the Eddie Lucio, Jr. Highway crosses Paredes Line Road with a 68 cent overpass.  Most of us avoid the demons by taking the free access road.