Thing is, just recently I've been thinking a lot about my past, in my case this is the dim and distant past. The period I'm thinking about is the late 60's early 70's. At that time I was still pretty young, too young to go into pubs and clubs but as I recall that didn't stop me. Seem to remember going on a regular basis, well every friday night actually, to the 'Blues Loft' above the Nags Head, High Wycombe. I didn't realise at the time but this tiny little space above a pretty ordinary pub was the place to be if you wanted to see the greatest Blues singers of the time. Think I took it all for grantage at the time but looking back, I was one hell of a lucky person to have done that. Case of right place right time I think. I saw B. B. king, Chicken Shack, John Lee Hooker, Freddy King, Howlin Wolf and many, many more really old and now almost forgotten blues men. In fact I sat at the bar with Howlin Wolf and had a beer or two before heading up to the loft, him to play, me to listen. Great big hulk of a man with enormous hands. He signed a beer mat with a cross, don't think he could write too well, as for the beer mat...lost in the mists of time I'm afraid. Strange thing is the video I found about the little museum dedicated to his memory talks about cards he sent home while on tour. I always thought he was virtually illiterate, maybe I got that wrong. Those were pre-digi days, where not every occasion was marked with a card full of pictures which means there is absolutely no evidence of any of this. The only pictures are in my head.
But the music lives on.
