March 31 was the birthday of blues piano player Big Maceo Merriweather (1905-1953), and 2024 (as I write this) marks the centennial year of when he moved from his native Georgia up to Detroit, thus entering a new phase of his professional career.
I've just been listening to Merriweather's first and biggest hit and signature tune, "The Worried Life Blues" (1941) recorded in Chicago with Tampa Red on guitar. The song evolved out of Sleepy John Estes' "Someday Baby", and would be on a short list of most aficionados' core tunes for the blues canon. Tt was among the very first songs inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983, and has been covered, in one form or another by Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Junior Parker, Eric Clapton, and many others. What I love about the original recording is the moment it captures -- you can actually HEAR the juncture between the old style Delta or "country" blues and the urban, electrified Chicago style even as it is coming into being!
Big Maceo is lesser known to the wider public due to the brevity of both his life and career. There's a clue in the photo above. He had a stroke in 1946 that took away the use of his right hand, at least with regard to the intricate, melodic requirements of the treble part of piano playing. Such a set-back doesn't finish you though unless you want it to. He could still bang out the chords with his left hand to accompany himself when he sang, and he sometimes worked with partners who took over the right hand part of a tune while he played. But then came the setback that eventually comes to all of us, and from which no one comes back. He died of a heart attack in 1953. He was only 47 years old.
This one goes out to my old high school buddy Matt, with whom I listened to old blues records hour upon hour back in the day, and who, well into middle age, mastered the art himself. Man, I wish he'd done that in high school -- we could have had a band! But take a lesson from Matt and Big Maceo this Easter Sunday. It ain't over 'til it's over.
For more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.
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