Dave's Anatomy: My History As A Writer #16: The Old Man Sang the Blues

After a brief spell out, I began to write stories about Sossity Chandler again. "The Old Man Sang the Blues" plugged into my love of blues. I play the blues. I've studied them, lived them, and listened to them for years. I think I do it pretty well. A couple of times I played them in a hookah lounge and coffee bar where the audience was primarily African-American. After three pieces by Buddy Guy, Robert Johnson, and Son House, more than one African-American came up and expressed appreciation; one guy said, "Hey, man, I really like the way you play the blues." Blues is an American art form with a beauty and subtlety I think is unrivaled in popular musical forms.

Sossity, my character, does the same. One night in her struggling years, she plays a rough bar in a small town in central Indiana. At intermission, a man invites her to his table and buys her a drink. She is astonished and thrilled to find out he is River Coleman, a bluesman she venerates and whose style has influenced how she plays guitar. She does a couple of his songs during the second half of the show and talks with him. He comments, "Girlie, if I was your age again, I’d be using all my charms to win you over." Her reply:  "If you were my age, you wouldn’t have to try very hard." This exchanged becomes significant later in the story.

Sossity writes Coleman, who is old, not very well off, 
and dependent on relatives. She visits him

when she can. After she makes it big, she supports him and, when he falls ill, arranges for medical attention. He dies and, in appreciation for her care and love, leaves the rights to all his songs to her in his will. Sossity publishes them, studies them, and records an album of her doing his songs. She lectures on his guitar style and mode of songwriting. She does a presentation on him at a blues seminar at Oxford University. This is where the trouble starts.

An attractive young couple related to Coleman appears and tell Sossity they have a legal claim to his music. They own a song he wrote that is not included in the catalog Sossity has. Their legal claim is that Coleman gave her rights to his "complete works" and she does not have the complete works. Therefore, the will is nullified and the rights will revert to them. She asks her lawyer if this is true. He tells her that in the real world such a claim would be preposterous, but in the world of the legal they have a strong case. Crestfallen, she contemplates what to do, remembering how she cared for Coleman because his relatives would not, showed him love and respect in his older days, and championed his music. Now she faces the threat that the music she promoted will be torn from her by a legal technicality.

At night she sleeps. In her dream, she is young, in a club in Harlem, sitting at the table of a young,handsome River Coleman. But she is also there as her present self. The modern Sossity is present within the 1950s Sossity and both are aware of each other. She is able to have an exchange with herself:

            “You coming to my place after the show?” [Coleman asks}

            “Sure I am.”

            “That’ll put some spark into what I play tonight.”

            “What you play tonight will put some spark into me.”

            Good answer, Sossity thought. My fifties self can get her game on pretty well—comes from playing in bars and getting hit on so much.

            Comes from being a lady, her other self answered, which is something you are not.

            Sossity withdrew more in order to observe and experience.

            “How are the gigs coming along?” she asked.

            “Good. I’m booked pretty much for the rest of the year and with some high-class shows. And Bluesville Records is thinking about giving me a recording contract.”  

            “That’s sweet.”

            “I’m doing a new song for you, Sossity. I just wrote it tonight.”

            “What is it? What’s it called?”

            “You’ll find out.” He squeezed her thigh.

            The jazz band played a half hour. River excused himself and went backstage to tune up.

            He’s quite a man, Sossity told herself.

            At least we can agree on that, her other self answered, puffing her cigarette.

Sossity's 1950s Self

Jorge Luis Borges’s fabulous story, "The Garden of the Forking Paths," tells us there are infinite possibilities to life. Sossity sees a way her life could have gone and, in another world, did go. One of my friends, who helps me edit, says this confused him. Maybe, but the concept of talking to another you from another life that exists in another realm of possibility seemed cool. We can, and perhaps do, live multiple lives. Sossity, in her dream, stumbles into one where she realizes what she said to River Coleman the first time she met him.

When she wakes up she finds a copy of the missing song, written in longhand, beside her bed. Coleman's relatives no longer have a case as Sossity does indeed have his complete works. As she plays that night at Oxford, she senses he is near. Love, she often told herself, is stronger than death.

"The Old Man Sang the Blues" is available in a print book you can get on the internet, an anthology titled Dreamspell Goddess. Lots of good stories contained therein.

For more information on books and goodreads, check out my Writer's Page. As I've said elsewhere, a lot of my stories are about music. The story Strange Brew is about a rock star in the 1970s who likes the blues, gets to open for the Rolling Stones a couple of time but happens to meet a mentally unbalanced witch who falls in love with him and transports him back to the time of Robert Johnson and Kokomo Arnold. Now there is another blues singer named Kokomo Dave. Here's some footage of him (of me) playing blues at the a local farmer's market:  Kokomo Dave Landrum. (I don't really play under that name, but for this it just seems like a good handle.) Listen to him play. He's pretty good.

I would love to hear your comments. Blues? Does anyone play? Who is your favorite figure from the blues world?