SONNY'S BLUES
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stuck. And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Every–
thing had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things
usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the
battle which was occurring in him up there.
Yet, watching Creole's face as they neared the end of the
first set, I had the feeling that something had happened, something
I hadn't heard. Then they finished, there was scattered applause, and
then, without an instant's warning, Creole started into something
else, it was almost sardonic,
it
was
Am I Blue.
And, as though he
commanded, Sonny began to play. Something began to happen. And
Creole let out the reins. The dry, low, black man said something
awful on the drums, Creole answered, and the drums talked back.
Then the horn insisted, sweet and high, slightly detached perhaps, and
Creole listened, commenting now and then, dry, and driving, beauti–
ful and calm and old. Then they all came together again, and Sonny
was part of the family again. I could tell this from his face. He
seemed to have found, right there beneath his fingers, a damn
brand-new piano. It seemed that he couldn't get over it. Then, for
awhile, just being happy with Sonny, they seemed to be agreeing
with him that brand-new pianos certainly were a gas.
Then Creole stepped forward to remind them that what they
,,:,ere playing was the blues. He hit something in all of them, he
hit something in me, myself, and the music tightened and deepened,
apprehension began to beat the air. Creole began to tell us what the
blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He
and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin,
destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to
make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are
delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be
heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've
got in all this darkness.
And this tale, according to that face, that body, those strong
hands on those strings, has another aspect in every country, and a
new depth in every generation. Listen, Creole seemed to be saying,
listen. Now these are Sonny's blues. He made the little black man
on the drums know it, and the bright, brown man on the horn.
Creole wasn't trying any longer to get Sonny in the water. He was
wishing him Godspeed. Then he stepped back, very slowly, filling
