One King and Queen Left on the Chess Board

Pop music has gotten so bad these days that I absolutely can't stand it. Am I alone? Who is listening to this crap and what is wrong with you? I'm really sorry but Katy Perry is not a musician nor has she any talent whatsoever and it makes me want to throw chairs across the room whenever I hear Last Friday Night. There is nothing real about this music other than the revenue I'm sure it's bringing in for Capital Records. A label that used to actually produce real music.

Over Christmas, Etta James was hospitalized and placed on a breathing machine due to her failing health. She is 73 years old and although not a lot of white people would know her by name, they would recognize her music. She crossed over with one record titled At Last but most of her other recordings were primarily popular with the black market.

Etta James was with Chess Records when Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Chuck Berry were inventing what was called the Chicago sound and the base for what would become rock and roll and soul music. (If you haven't seen the movie Cadillac Records, I highly recommend it.)

Etta James and Chuck Berry are the last of the main five that had such an enormous influence in creating America's music and after Etta is gone, there will obviously be only one left. And Chuck just turned 85 last October.

With Etta James in such poor health, I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the men and women that invented America's music. They were slaves, sharecroppers, cotton farmers, Gandy dancers, ice men, butchers, meat packers, gamblers, alcoholics, drug addicts, womanizers, preachers, sinners and saints. 

They were real people and so was the music they played. Music that was created from a troubled man and last time I checked, we've been in trouble ever since Adam and Eve bit that apple.

Play on brothers and sisters.