Go Retire Psychiatrist

It’s been a week since I heard the song “All Around the World” by Taj Mahal and ‘Keb ‘Mo on the Iowa KCCK radio show ‘da Blues on Friday night hosted by Bobby Deforest (Bobby D). Compared to all the other blues tunes, that one sounded almost too optimistic for a blues song. A couple of memories arose.

One of them was a short talk I had when I was a young man with the main boss at Wallace Holland Kastler Schmitz & Co. (WHKS & Co.), Ralph Wallace. He was trying to engage me in a conversation about blues music—which I had to confess I knew nothing about. He looked stunned. He was a white man and knew more about blues music than I did, a young black man who had almost no contact with black people growing up in Mason City, Iowa.

My white mom, a single parent, raised me and my younger brother, Randy. My dad was black but had left home a long time ago. I ran into him later, but that’s another story. Mom had a record player and the records she played were kind of like blues music. One of them was a rhythm and blues tune called “Yakety Yak” by the Coasters. Another song was “Willie and the Hand Jive” by Johnny Otis, who chose to live his life as a black man, yet was a Greek immigrant. That kind of background didn’t give me much to talk about when it came to the blues.

The other memory is pretty recent, and it’s the 1979 movie “The Jerk” starring Steve Martin. I thought Martin was one of the funniest entertainers I ever saw. Anyway, in the movie, his role is that he thinks he the black son of poor black sharecroppers who love the blues—except he’s white and he has no rhythm. He can’t enjoy blues music because it depresses him. Some lines from the film:

Navin’s “mom”: Feeling different again, huh?

Navin: It’s like I feel different. It’s like I don’t belong here.

Mother: It’s your birthday, and it’s time you knew. Navin, you’re not our natural born child.

Navin: I’m not?

Mother: You were left on our doorstep. But we raised you like you were one of us.

Navin: You mean I’m going to stay this color? (Navin cries)

Taj (not the Taj of TajMo; he’s Navin’s “brother”) walks in and says to Navin: Navin? I wrapped your sandwich in cellophane, just like you like it. You wanna come in and sing some blues?

Navin: No thanks Taj. There’s something about those songs. They depress me.

So, that is sometimes what make me enjoy blues music that is uplifting, because it does exist and I tend to be optimistic. Almost everything Bobby D played last Friday night contrasted sharply in tone and content with the TajMo song, “All Around the World.”

It has to be OK for me to like that because—I liked to wrap my Braunschweiger and Miracle Whip sandwiches in cellophane too.