the blues is forever v2/0

8/9/2019 The Blues is Forever v2/0

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A.A. Castro/Blues Is Forever/1

Anthony A. Castro about 2,300 words

1D Oak Crest Court

Novato, CA 94947(415)897-0305

[email protected]

The Blues Is Forever

A Musical Fantasy

By A. A. Castro




It’s 2:00 AM on a cold October night. The young man has snuck out of the plantation

where he works and is walking towards the crossroads down the highway. He’s got a guitar

on his shoulder, a beat up old thing that doesn’t even look like it’s playable. He doesn’t care.

He knows what he has to do. His name is Robert Johnson and he’s going to be the greatest

blues guitar player of all time. The only thing between him and fame are his fingers; slow,

clumsy things that just can’t seem to make the guitar sound like he hears it in his head. So

he’s come out here to do what the old man told him he had to do: sell his soul to the Devil so

he can play the blues.

The wind is cold and it cuts thru his clothes right to the bone. He stands in the middle

of the crossroads, the guitar in his hands. His eyes turn to the sky; the moon is full tonight

and it casts its brilliance all around but there are also dark storm clouds racing across its face,

clouds that cover the light and make the night even darker and more shadowy. He thinks to

himself that he still has time to go back and forget all about this as he looks at the branches

swaying in the wind. They’re bare and they look like skeleton fingers scratching a sky the

color of a coffin lid. I can’t go back to that life, he thinks to himself, I gotta sing my blues.

The clouds part and the wind dies down, letting a shaft of moonlight come down in the middle

of the crossroads and bathe young Robert Johnson like a spotlight. With trembling hands, he

strums the guitar, head lowered and eyes closed.

He feels the fingers tapping his shoulder, twice. He doesn’t turn around; the old man

told him he can’t look or the deal will never happen. Without looking, he hands the guitar to

a dark hand. That’s all he sees. The next thing he hears is a sliding note that ends in a wail

and he hears the Devil singing the blues…




I got to keep moving, blues falling down like hail… And the day keeps on remindin’ me…

There’s a hellhound on my trail…

He hears a deep voice, a voice with no warmth in it. It asks Robert Johnson what do

you want and what will you give me for it. Robert Johnson hesitates for a second before

answering he wants to be famous and known as the greatest blues guitar player ever. The

man repeats his question – what will you give me for it, he asks Robert Johnson again.

Robert Johnson looks down and whispers that he’ll give his soul for it.

The man hands the guitar back. Robert Johnson extends his hand to take it…and

discovers that touching it burns him with a flame that reaches down to the core of his being,

as if a branding iron was pressed into his soul. He gasps and falls to his knees, still clutching

the guitar as the dark man laughs and disappears into the darkness of the night. That’s it, the

deal is done. Robert Johnson will be the greatest guitar player of all time, but his soul belongs

to the Devil.

It’s now late November in 1936. Robert Johnson has traveled the Delta, singing and

playing his blues. He’s good…no, he’s the best. Women go crazy for him, young and good

looking as he is, and rarely does he go to bed alone. But the women never last, the money

never lasts…there’s something about Robert Johnson that keeps people at bay, a haunting

spark deep in the back of his eyes, something dark and paranoid that makes friends and lovers

leave him.

He’s just left a recording studio. Finally, his music is on records that people can buy

and play. He’s been paid and he’s feeling good about life. But he doesn’t know that those

fifteen songs he recorded in that tiny studio are all that will ever survive of him and his music,




the only way anyone will ever hear him rip into the guitar and wail his sad and desperate

lyrics.

It’s now early August in 1938. Robert Johnson is laying down on a cot, breathing

harshly, his forehead covered in a cold sweat. He thinks to himself, I can’t die yet, the Devil

ain’t done his part yet. He’s a blues musician and a damn good one but he’s not famous and

he’s not rich. He recorded fifteen songs a few years back but his records didn’t sell. He

shivers and shakes, clutching the mojo hand his grandmother gave him the day he left her

farm.

He turns his head. There’s a man standing on the doorway, a dark man. He’s not

black, he’s just…shadowy, his face always in darkness. The man walks into the room and

looks at Robert Johnson. His lips don’t move but Robert Johnson knows who he is. He can

hear him in his mind saying it’s your time and I’ve come to collect on our deal.

Robert Johnson shakes his head. No, he thinks, you didn’t do your part of the deal

‘cause I ain’t rich or famous. You can’t take my soul yet, he screams in his mind. He hears

the Devil laughing in his mind, saying foolish boy, you never said when you wanted to be

famous…your name will be remembered by anyone who ever picks up a guitar but it won’t be

until you’re long dead and moldering in the grave…now quit this life and come with me.

He clutches the mojo hand one last time. It can’t end like this, he thinks, I won’t let it,

my soul has to be free! With one last rattling breath, Robert Johnson dies. But the Devil

doesn’t get his soul. Somehow, the raw force of his desire tears the soul of Robert Johnson

free from the clutches of the Devil, breaking the pact made all those years ago. In the end,




there is justice in this because Robert Johnson had been right all along: the Devil tried to cheat

him.

But now his soul has to flee, it has to hide because the Devil never forgets or forgives.

He’ll chase Robert Johnson’s soul from one end of eternity to the other until he catches him.

So Robert Johnson’s soul flees through all of time and space…

You may bury my body. Down by the highway side

So my old evil spirit

Can get a Greyhound bus and ride…

It’s now late November in 1942. Seattle is a cold and rainy city and the young

pregnant woman shivers in the ambulance taking her to the hospital. Her contractions are

coming faster and faster now; the baby could come at any time.

The soul of Robert Johnson is there also. It’s been waiting, waiting for just the right

body and soul to merge with, someone born with the musical talent it needs for fulfillment.

It’s the only place where it can hide from the Devil.

Her name’s Lucille, and she’s only seventeen. Her husband is in the Army, stationed

in Oklahoma, and she’s all alone. The birth is hard and painful; it takes hours before she

hears a slap and the wail of a newborn baby, before someone tells her that it’s a boy and

someone else asks what the baby’s name is.

The nurse puts the baby in her arms. Lucille, exhausted but happy, looks at the little

red face of her son and feels his tiny hand wrap itself around her index finger. She thinks for

a second before answering that her boy’s name is Johnny Allen Hendrix.




The night I was born, lord the moon stood a fire red.Said the night I was born, the moon turned a fire red.

My poor mother her cryin', she said "The gypsy was right!"

And she fell right dead.

Now it’s early 1966 and Johnny Allen Hendrix now goes by Jimi Hendrix. He’s in

London, the first time he’s left the USA. It’s a big, vibrant city and there’s so much to see

and do but he just doesn’t have the time. He’s a guitar player and he can wail the blues and

rock out like nobody else can. A bass player named Chas Chandler is helping him put

together a band and manage his career.

He’s just finished a gig in a small club where the people are still wondering just who

that young guy was, the one who was playing the guitar as if it were an extension of his very

being. Jimi can still feel the energy of the crowd coursing through him, making his fingers

and toes tingle as he asks himself how can there be a better feeling in this world. He changes

quickly; there’re people waiting for him.

Right now, he’s walking into a London flat. It’s a party and Chas is introducing him

to another guitar player named Eric Clapton. They hit it off right away and spend the rest of

the evening talking about how much they both love the blues. After a while, this guy with a

giant nose named Pete joins them and all three decide to leave and party at Eric’s place.

They’re sitting on Eric’s couch as he pulls out a battered old album and tells Jimi and

Pete to get ready to hear the greatest blues cat of all time. He hands Jimi the album cover…

it’s called “Robert Johnson, King of the Delta Blues Singers.” The old album is stained, the

corners frayed, the lettering starting to fade but there’s a strange tingle that Jimi feels when he

touches it, almost like the tingle he feels when he’s ripping into the guitar and sending his




music soaring into the night. But the name on the cover doesn’t mean anything to him until

the needle hits the groove and he hears that plaintive wail again…

Something snaps and turns in Jimi’s mind. He knows who he is now, what he can do

and what he has to do. He’s Robert Johnson and he’s also Jimi Hendrix, two modern titans of

music who are about to create some of the greatest music ever recorded. His heart swells with

joy and happiness at the uncountable possibilities stretching before him.

He’s walking home later, and he’s crossing the street. Now he knows why crossroads

have always been scary and ominous places for him, even as a child. The moon is full, just

like that night so long ago when he sees him, standing in a shaft of moonlight as the dark

clouds part in the sky. The dark one, the shadowy man who’s been searching for his soul for

all these years…the Devil. Jimi turns pale and runs, but he knows that the Devil will chase

him until he catches him. It’s not fair, Jimi thinks, I’ve got all this music in me but I don’t

have any time. The voice of Robert Johnson is in his mind then, saying boy, you better find

the time ‘cause you may never get another chance.

Jimi is now playing the Olympia in Paris, the Monterey Pops Festival, Woodstock.

People go crazy for him, they’ve never seen or heard anything like him before. He makes the

guitar sound like nobody ever has. He’s rich and he’s famous. But at every show, every time

he looks at the wings of the stage he sees him standing there, waiting. The dark man dressed

in black from head to toe, face always shrouded in shadows, the Devil only he can see.

Now it’s mid-September of 1970. In a flat in London, Jimi Hendrix is dying of an

accidental overdose of sleeping pills and red wine. His girlfriend hears him talking, no,

arguing with someone but they’re the only two people there. She puts a cold compress on his




head as they wait for an ambulance, and she wonders what is Jimi hallucinating about right

now as he babbles about the Devil at the crossroads. He clutches a very old mojo hand

tightly, so tightly that he’s buried with it in his hand. But his soul, the blues-filled soul of

Johnny Robert Allen Hendrix Johnson, is free again.

A broom is drearily sweeping Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life.

Somewhere a Queen is weeping,

Somewhere a King has no wife.

It floats thru time and space. It searches, always, never tiring until it finds the right

vessel to make the music live again. It could be tomorrow or it could be the very end of time

but it will search, a disembodied spirit of music, for as long as it takes. And the Devil will be

right behind it, waiting wherever people gather to play music, searching in every crossroads,

chasing it thru the endless reaches of infinity.

So the next time you’re in a bar or a party and you see a young man strap on an

electric guitar, take heed. Listen to him and if you hear a sound like nothing you’ve ever

heard before, look deep into that young man’s eyes. Somewhere in the back there, you’ll see

a nattily-dressed young man strumming an old Gibson and next to him a young man dressed

like a gipsy and playing a left-handed guitar upside down. Oh, and if you see a shadowy man

dressed in black, don’t approach him or try to talk to him. Just stay away from him if you

value your soul. Why? Because the blues is more than just music and more than just a

feeling. The blues is forever, baby…the blues is forever.

THE END

the blues is forever v2/0

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