***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

… it wasn’t always about the fight to beat the rent-collector for another week to keep a roof over your head, it wasn’t always about the indignity of standing in soup-lines when one was willing and able to work, it wasn’t always about some big world historic struggle to gain dignity, and it wasn’t always about a guy’s number coming up, a girl seeing him off at the station before he was gathered up in some god- forsaken troop transport to face, to face whatever was coming, and the waiting. Sure a lot of it was, most of it, but the multifarious varieties of human experience, human experience close to the nub, did not take a holiday just because the economy tanked or the world was facing the night of the long knives. What did she know of class struggles and long knives all she knew was her man was gone, gone away and she was blue, blue as a woman could be and still stand. What did she know of too much production and not enough demand when all she knew was that her man, her only man, had gone, gone and left her with no dough, and no way to get dough. What did she know of world historic monsters when her man has beat it and left her flat, maybe gone back to his other woman, or maybe some new young thing. Yeah, what did she know except the damn man-wanting blues, the baddest blues around, Yeah, what did she know…