Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Mistaken Time Zone Blues

Take a top-notch, swingin' big band and substitute the soloist horn player with a laid-back, guitar-lick-inventing blues singer.
That's probably the best way to describe the 1940s and early 1950s sound of the magnificent T-BONE WALKER.
I have been listening to Walker's classic "WEST COAST BLUES" sound while driving around on a fantastically beautiful day.
I love this type of music. I hear it and my mind conjures images of warm nights and swanky nightclubs in Los Angeles, circa 1948.
One song jarred my blues reverie this afternoon, probably because I have been listening a little too closely.
"Well, the clock is strikin' 12, somebody's got to go," Walker sings on the song "MIDNIGHT BLUES (a.k.a MIDNIGHT IN MEMPHIS)."
Walker sings:
"When it's 12 o'clock in Memphis, it's one o'clock in San Antone. When it's midnight in California, I'll be so all alone."
Walker might be right when it comes to being along when it's midnight in California, but he's mistaken about Memphis and San Antonio -- they are both in the Central Time Zone!
"Midnight is an awful hour, why does it come so soon," Walker sings. "It never brings me happ'ness, it always leave me filled with gloom."
I'm sorry, T-Bone, but when I heard the mix-up on non-existent time difference between Memphis and San Antonio, I was filled with anything but gloom.
I LOL'd.

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