I am a lucky guy. I know this. I’ve got a beautiful wife who loves me even though—God bless her—she’s seen just about every one of my flaws. Trust me, I may come off as smart and capable on this blog but I am incapable of getting myself ready for darn near anything without her help. And that’s not the only thing wrong with me, ha haha!
On the other hand, my wife is just about the most perfect creature I’ve ever met. Beautiful, smart, capable, nurturing. I still am not sure why she picked me. I tell her often that her only fault was that she didn’t listen to blues before she met me.She said she thought it was boring so she never bothered.
I didn’t waste any time educating her on her mistake, and she must have liked me enough to take it seriously all those years ago. I gave her a blues education in much the way I did, through Eric Clapton. I figured I would start there, first because he is so good but also because my wife had already heard of him. She decided his solo stuff wasn’t bad, which is when I knew that this woman was a keeper. From there, we went backwards–through Cream and then The Yardbirds, and then we went to Stevie Ray Vaugh, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and other really well known musicians. She knew some of the songs, so again—it didn’t seem so bad. Once or twice, she even said to me, “Oh, so this is considered blues music? I like this!” Yes, darling, it is considered blues! And yes, it’s very good!
Once we got through the familiar stuff, I went into more of the really old school stuff and people she probably wasn’t as familiar with. Ledbelly, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, W.C. Handy… I could go on, but you get the idea. At first, I thought she was humoring me. Then I realized she was buying her own blues music and I realized I had gotten through to her! We got married somewhere in all of this, and it probably comes as no surprise that our first dance as husband and wife was to an Etta James song (my wife chose “My Dearest Darling”). She had such a beautiful voice, didn’t she? It’s been a lot of years and we still dance to that song every year on our anniversary. I really am a lucky man!
She likes to tell people now that it is the one and only time she has ever been wrong.I usually just smile and keep my mouth shut (which is the secret to a happy marriage, by the way). I like that blues is part of our love story, and that her ignorance about it is something we can joke about now.