
Credit ByRebecca-DeltaFair-Memphis
Gone on a Mission Blues
I got that David Archuleta
Gone on a mission blues.
I got that David Archuleta
He been gone on a mission blues.
And if he don’t get back here soon,
I’ll just keep doin what I do.
I wake up in the morning with his voice inside my head,
I play his music all day long and then I FALL back into bed.
I got that David Archuleta
Gone on a mission blues.
Got that David Archuleta
He been gone too long on a mission blues, yeah.
And if he don’t get back here soon,
I’ll just keep doin what I do.
Most every Saturday night I’m in The Voice Unplugged Cafe
I watch whatever Abrra plays cause it don’t MATTER anyway.
I got that David Archuleta
Gone on a mission blues.
I got that David Archuleta
Gone on a mission blues.
And if he don’t get back here soon,
I’ll just keep doin what I do.
I’m saving all my money till he gets back home again.
Cuz if he don’t come where I am, I’ll just HAVE to go to him.
I got that David Archuleta
Gone on a mission blues.
I got that David Archuleta
He been gone too long on a mission blues.
And if he don’t get back here soon,
I’ll just keep right on doin what I mostly do.
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I guess I was singing the blues in my sleep the other night, because when I woke up those lyrics sprang fully formed in my head. I got up and wrote the words down like I was taking dictation. Maybe it’s because I’m missing him or because I was walking in Memphis this past weekend. The last time I saw Beale Street was at night, but this time, in broad daylight, it felt different. No loud music from every establishment we passed, just the occasional musician singing and strumming quietly on his guitar. Gone were the bright lights and the swarming crowds jostling you on the sidewalks. We could actually see the sidewalk now, the famous Beale Streets Brass Note Walk of Fame and read the names of the great ones of the Blues: BB King, Elvis Presley, Sam Phillips, Jerry Lee Lewis, Memphis Slim and on and on. I took a picture of the street that day
and was surprised by a huge statue of Elvis I had overlooked before in the dark.
Looking up at it, I remembered David at the Delta Fest in Memphis, saying “Thank you very much,” after each song until he laughed at himself for doing it. There is a spirit to Memphis and a spirit to the Blues that feels like nothing else. The music claws deep into your soul, unearthing feelings that are raw and real.
I want David to sing the blues sometimes. He has the gift and a passion to bring what is dark into the light. Think of “Falling” and “Broken,” both written by him. And there is pain even amidst the joy in the songs he wrote for The Other Side of Down and those he chose for Begin. As an artist he is an old soul of tremendous empathy and unfathomable depths.
“Musically, he was like an old man in a boy’s skin.” ― Eric Clapton on Steve Winwood, age 15.
“For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.”― Eric Clapton
Credit Abrra
In this next vid, check out 2:17 and 2:27-2:37
Credit Abermudes
“Crazy. I dabbled in things like Howlin’ Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I’d been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues.”
― Jack White
And here is the whole performance on video.
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Most blues artists play the guitar but not all. Whether on guitar, or like Ray Charles on piano, the blues is limited only by the soul that can hold it, like Son House, in just his hands. Here is Ray Charles on piano with the incomparable BB King on guitar performing, “Sinner’s Prayer.”’