Go Retire Psychiatrist

Last night I finally got it straight from host Ed English what the new name is for the Friday night blues show on KCCK-FM. It’s the Big Shoes Friday Blues Show.

Ed has a lot of good energy, his voice is bright, he’s smart, and he makes sure that women and local blues artists get lots of time on the show. And when he has a slight hitch with the controls, he just talks himself through it, like I did when I was switching out electric wall outlets in an older house we had— “Let’s see, the black wire gets connected to the finger bone which gets connected to the ground terminal and…ZZZZZZZZZZZZPOP!!!!”

Seriously (not really), I heard a blues song for the first time which was surprising. The lyrics definitely said that the blues makes you feel good. It was the second number on the playlist when the show started. It’s Jon Cleary’s “So Damn Good.”

It reminds me, believe it or not, of what some people think about the blues, which is it always makes you depressed. I pointed this out in my post from June 18, 2026 about the song “All Around the World.” I included lines from the 1979 movie, “The Jerk” to underline the point:

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.

I also heard one of my favorite artists, Catfish Keith. It was a number that I haven’t heard, “Jitterbug Swing.” It’s from an album, Jitterbug Swing, out in 1992. That’s a while back. I was in psychiatry residency training program and I barely had time to sleep, much less chase down blues artist albums. Catfish is some kind of performer and his style is immediately recognizable. I sat up!

There’s a 1993 web article by Trevor Hodgett entitled “Catfish Keith: Spreading the Country Blues Word All Over the World.”

I was surprised to learn from Ed that Catfish Keith is a local artist, or at least started out that way. He talked about how he grew up in Davenport, Iowa. And that song “Jitterbug Swing” is his cover of a song by Bukka White (I’ve never heard of him, but hey, I’m just a retired psychiatrist, give me a break).

Catfish Keith sounds like a really nice guy in Hodgett’s article. He emphasized the positive and urged everybody to treat people right.

Ed English has it going on. He’s got the spirit of the thing. And he’ll get all the knobs and dials down.