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diggEight decades apart, they argue the meaning of true blues
By Jeannette Batz CoopermanPhotograph by Scott Rovak
“Henry’s the only person on the planet who has recorded in every decade since the 1920s,” says John May, president of the St. Louis Blues Society, “and Marquise, he’s the future of real blues. He’s not a rock ’n’ roller. He’s carrying the torch.” May’s one of the owners of BB’s Jazz, Blues and Soups, a home away from home for Henry Townsend—and now Marquise Knox, ever since he stunned the crowd at the Baby Blues contest. “The first time they met, about six months ago, Marquise grabbed a vintage guitar off the wall,” May recalls. “He sat right down in front of Henry and played some Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Henry just lit up.”
H.T.: Nine, maybe 10 generations of blues have come along, and you’ve got a touch of all of it. You date back to my day.
M.K.: I heard your music on a turntable six years ago. It was a little different from everybody else’s, your style of playing. You put a little more to it, took the stuff from way back when and amplified it.
H.T.: At one time, I thought I could be somebody else. It didn’t get me anywhere, so I said, “Well, maybe I better come on back in and be me.” Seems like me and you are doing it the same way.
M.K.: I try.
H.T.: All you got to do is keep the train moving. Don’t give up ’cause you didn’t get it this time. See why you couldn’t get it, and let that talk to you.
M.K.: When I first played for you, you told me you heard a mistake. I said, “Yeah”—and you said, “But you know how to cover it up, just like me.”
H.T.: There’s no such thing as a mistake, if you know where to place it. You understood that right away. If you hit something and it doesn’t sound right, find a way to make it fit.
M.K.: Take a mistake and make it a song.
H.T.: I had 12 music instructors come to a session once; they’d heard that I said there wasn’t any such thing as a bad key or a bad note. There ain’t no notes that are gonna spoil it. They will if you hit it wrong, time it wrong, but music is a circle: If you bring that note back into its closest relatives, it’s beautiful. I showed all 12 of them how to do it. You know how many conquered it? Two.
M.K.: The blues can be played, but it ain’t nothin’ to play with.
H.T.: People say the blues is when you’re feeling depressed. Well, you can get in that groove and stay there if you want, sing about how bad Mike done Joe and all that, but there’s a million other grooves.
M.K.: Without blues and gospel, there wouldn’t be rock ’n’ roll or rap. Rap didn’t just fall from the sky. It had to be born.
H.T.: It already is born. It just hasn’t been executed yet. It’s a disgrace to the human race.
M.K.: Some of it’s a little hardcore. It’s a violent way to pin down your feelings. But everybody’s got a way of expressing how they feel, and it don’t just go through the blues.
H.T.: Blues is more related to gospel than anything else. “Darlin’, I’d swim the ocean for you”—that’s not blues, that’s a lie. In the biblical time, songs were attached to truth, and that’s all the blues is. People used to say to me, “That stuff is going to send you to hell.” Well, if you are not telling the truth, how the hell are you going to get to heaven?
M.K.: The blues is about life.
H.T.: Disagreement, disappointment—it has a lot to do with disappointment. People pretending one thing is another.
M.K.: It’s about male and female mostly, how one deceived the other.
H.T.: [Chuckles.] You hit on something there. What has the woman been to mankind since creation? Trouble! Eve
deceives Adam, Delilah deceives Sampson, on and on. Sometimes it comes together so it stays put—but most times, something gets in there and spoils it.
M.K.: We men go around and bark and knock over trash cans. Women are like cats; they’re slick about it. The blues tells you every trick you can pull out of a hat besides a bunny rabbit.
H.T.: There’s certain things you have to study so you can give some kind of explanation to yourself why certain things happen. That can give you a clue to put together some poetry.
M.K.: Just ’cause you play it don’t mean you know about it. My grandmother and grandfather on both sides were sharecroppers, in the field by sunrise. You listen to the story of their life and you listen to the songs and you capture what they were talking about.
H.T.: To me, the piano is a little easier, but it doesn’t steal the love I have for the guitar. With the guitar, you can bend them strings almost to anything.
M.K.: The guitar can make a sound that nothing else can make. It’s hard to describe, but it’s lovable.
H.T.: What you feel don’t mean nothin’, though. Whatever your fans say is what counts. They the judge, they the jury.
M.K.: Yeah, if the crowd’s not with you, you can’t go nowhere. It’s like playing to an empty house.
H.T.: After you get a little experience, you can detect that. Then you go searching for your audience.
M.K.: You’ve got to make a name for yourself. That don’t mean you want to be the best.
H.T.: But you want to be among ’em.
M.K.: I want to have millions of fans, the way you do. Reach—
H.T.: Reach the universe?
M.K.: Yeah.
