“Learning to Sing the Blues” Rev. Greg Ward and Zackrie Vinczen and Soul Rising Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley October 11, 2015 BEGINNING THE JOURNEY: <<Zackrie Vinczen>> Riley B. King was born on a black sharecropping cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta. His mother was very religious and insisted he sing in the Elkhorn Baptist Church choir. When she left his father for another man, he went to live with his grandmother and was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God because the local minister led the congregation in singing with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar. That minister taught young Riley his first three chords. When his mother died, Riley had to survive by doing farm work. His uncle taught him guitar, and he bought an eight-dollar guitar for himself to learn on. It wasn’t long until he discovered he could make more money playing on street corners than he could doing farm work. He originally tried singing the gospel music he’d learned from his mother in the church choir. Everybody appreciated it, but nobody gave him any money. So he tried playing the blues, using lyrics he’d learned from gospel songs. Whenever the song said, ‘My Lord’, he sang “my baby” instead. From that point forward, people gave him a lot more money. He finished a tour in the Army during World War II after which he moved to Memphis. There, he worked as a deejay using the on-air name “Beale Street Blues-Boy,” which got shortened to “Blues Boy”, which got shortened to B.B. B.B. King toured the country with his trademark red guitar, which he named Lucille, for two decades. He played in black clubs and dance halls, saloons and even in jails. “Some people smoke and drink to get through their troubles…” he said. “But somehow, just holding the guitar and singing the blues seems to do it for me.” B.B. King died this past May; he was 89. Come, let us worship together. READING <<Rev. Greg and Soul Rising>> (Adapted from a dialogue interview between the Rev. Ken Reeves and a member of an Ohio UU congregation) I grew up in the south. My parents gave me piano lessons, and I learned the classics. I loved Beethoven's, "Moonlight Sonata." But in my town of Hopewell, Mississippi, I would hear bits and snatches of the blues. When no one was around I tried playing what I heard. I picked out chord changes, and improvised. I sang and played the sadness that came to me on account of my Uncle Bert doing to me things I couldn’t talk to no one about, and “Moonlight Sonata” seemed too nice for my life. I played the blues in secret until my Mama caught me and told me that that music was ugly. On top of that, Daddy hated the blues and turned red when he heard I'd been playing them. They told me only to play pretty music, like, "Moonlight Sonata." I obliged. But when they wasn’t around, I played the blues. And every once in a while, when Mama and Papa were home, I tried to sneak the blues into, "Moonlight Sonata." One night when I thought I was alone ‘cause Daddy went out drinking, he came back and heard me singing the blues. He got so mad, he grabbed his pistol, and shot the piano. My ears rang for days. Eventually he pushed the piano out onto the back porch where storms beat on it. I stopped playing altogether and became quiet, as if to become invisible. I took to walking across town to the train station, just to stand on the platform and look up and down the tracks. Down led to New Orleans and up led to Memphis, which seemed like the other side of the universe, and freedom. I'd stand on the "whites only" side of the platform all alone. On the colored side folks lined up with belongings in paper bags and children in hand, heading north – out of the cotton fields, to Memphis. Maybe even Chicago. I envied them. They had each other, a ticket to freedom, and a way through the blues. I had nobody, no freedom, and no blues. I got a job at the local five and ten, and for a couple years hid all my money in my mattress, until one day, when I was seventeen, I packed a suitcase, walked myself to the station, and bought me a ticket north. I got on that train and thought I was free. But I was so naive. It turned out I took my Mama and Daddy, my Uncle Bert and all of Hopewell, Mississippi right along with me. What I had thought was freedom was only an escape, and when all you do is escape, your shout of freedom is never quite the blues - just a rattling of chains. The most unfree souls I ever knowed spent their (whole) lives escaping. SERMON <<Rev. Greg and Soul Rising>> “Learning to Sing the Blues” By the time I was five, I knew something of the blues, even if I wouldn’t be able to sing ‘em till much later. There was always fightin’ in our house. And everyone was so busy… There was never enough of anything… especially one another. It got so bad, me and my brother – a year older – made a plan to pack up our things and head out on our own. We made a sign that read, “Two kids, free to a good home.” We were gonna stand out in front of the house until we got an offer. But our neighbors turned us in and our escape was foiled. So we kept our blues to ourselves. By that time, we were already Unitarian Universalist. Which meant that we couldn’t sing the blues. Not in church anyway. It wasn’t our way. We did a lot of Bach and Brahams in my home church. Good church organ music. But like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata – it didn’t seem to fit. I never doubted that UUs felt the blues. I knew we had heartbreaks of our own, deep down. We just had a different way of dealing with them. We didn’t try to sing the blues so much as we tried to intellectualize the blues. As a UU, I was raised to out think the blues. Develop sophisticated escape routes in my mind. But every one of those routes always returned me back home. I understood what it meant: “The most unfree souls… (always spend) their (whole) lives escaping.” Of course, I wasn’t the first to try out thinking the blues. In the 5th century BCE, when Socrates was put to death, his protégé, Plato grieved. In his grief, he withdrew from the harsh, imperfect world of feelings, and chose to live in a world of perfect logic. He didn’t get sad or morose. He didn’t get the blues. He simply escaped into his mind. UU colleague, the Rev. Linda Hansen asks an interesting question about this in an old edition of the UU World. “Unitarian Universaslists,” she says, “are sometimes dismissive of those who seek refuge in a world beyond this one. But wouldn’t it be more honest to admit that we, too, do this. That there is something of Plato in each of us?” – A penchant to transcend this world of feelings: and worries, and sadness and grief, and insulate ourselves in the contours of our minds? It’s worth wondering, then, how we plan to love our lives if we never take time to know – to love – the sad parts too. It’s like being in a relationship where you’re only allowed to be happy – where hurt, sadness, grief, anger – even confusion – are unacceptable. So you stuff it down. Or, at best, intellectualize it. I’m 53 years old now and that was the first half of my life. And that’s my blues. The “invisible child in a divorcing household blues.” Or, later, “I heard my honey promise her love but she was talking to the dog” blues. What’s your blues? Do you have your own blues song? Maybe you recently let go of a good friend. Or maybe a good friend recently let go of you. Maybe workin’ is gettin’ in the way of loving… or livin’ your dream. Maybe you been waking up alone and wanting to wake up next to someone else. Or maybe you been waking up next to someone else and wanting to wake up alone. In my mind, there isn’t anybody who doesn’t have the goods somewhere in their life, to sing some down home, honest, hard boiled blues now and again. And if you’ve looked hard – real hard – at your whole life… and can’t find something – anything – worth singing the blues for, well, then… that’s an even better reason to sing the blues. ‘Cause, if that’s the case, chances are you haven’t learned to care about anything enough to give it the power to break your heart. A sure fire sign that you spent your life thinking too much! But maybe… maybe…. you’re like me… and you’ve HAD the blues, but you just aren’t sure how to SING the blues. Well… if that’s the case… maybe we should stop all this heavy thinking, and take a good look at what really IS – and what ISN’T – the blues. The blues is something you feel, not something you intellectualize.