Playing weeks and weeks of Stormy Monday

I wasn't terrribly surprised to see that Stormy Monday is probably the most-recorded blues song of 'em all, with at least 1,134 versions out there. Without a doubt it's the most played by bar bands.

It's a great song. T-Bone Walker originally played it, and the lyrics take you through a week of the blues:

"They Call it stormy Monday,
But Tuesday's just as bad ..."

It was also the first blues I've played in public, if you don't count Miles Davis' "All Blues," which is a jazz piece from his Kind Of Blue album.

But in my first sessions on stage, this harmonica player discovered something about colliding perceptions and reality:

• All harmonica players do nothing but blues.
• All bar bands know "Stormy Monday."
• Therefore, all harp players end up playing "Stormy Monday." A lot.

It's hysterical. Every bar band in the world plays "Stormy Monday." In fact, with many it's the only blues they know. They play it to "prove" they know blues, but in actuality it just proves the band doesn't know much of anything.

So after years of playing it, and even hearing it in my sleep, I ran out of ideas. Got tired of playing it. There are only so many ways you can attack a slow-blues standard, and I probably used all of them at some point. Double-time in the solos. Long pauses and held notes, going into clusters of sixteenth-notes. I quoted other songs -- my favorite version was throwing a few notes from that other blues chestnut, "After Hours," into it. I had to do something with it. In 1994, I stopped playing it.

In a famous interview, jazz innovator Charlie Parker said he had the same feeling with "Cherokee." He'd played it so many times he could do it while nodding out (and apparently he often did). Got sick of that song. But he did break through that wall, by using the upper intervals of the chords. This gave him a larger pool of notes to work with, and he said he came alive musically at that point.

I didn't go that far; even in my fantasies there's no way I can get close to Parker's musicianship. Instead, I chose to "boycott" the song. Any time it came up on stage, I sat it out. Which was all right; I was working in more of a country/rock direction then. I'd do other blues every so often, but indulged my interest in other musical forms.

It wasn't until 10 years later that I consented to play "Stormy Monday" again. I was playing with a vocalist named Jayne Valentine, who had this really powerful, expressive voice. We also shared an intuituve musical rapport, and every time we got together on stage, sparks would fly. More than a few folks swore we were an "item," that's how high the energy level was. But one night she decided to sing T-Bone's song, and because it was someone with the talent level and emotional level of Jayne, I joined her on it. And again, the song came alive.

Working with folks like that would put muscle, blood, and breath to any song.

T-Bone is still one of the great blues guitarists, and Stormy Monday is still a great song.

I'd play it again.

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