Southern Style

On a chilly November day, the park was overflowing with people come to hear the music.

There were blankets and quilts laid out all across the grass, small circles of lawn chairs placed in the sunshine. Kids and dogs ran mindlessly through the crowd and there was a smell of barbeque and hot wings in the air. Artist tents were erected to sell jewelry and homemade jams, candles and woodcrafts. The stages were readied, sound checks echoed, and the gathering clapped and cheered, knitted, read, wandered. Entire families, from youngest to eldest, found their places and began games of scrabble and checkers. The park was alive with small town-ness, infants in strollers, kids on roller blades, old folks on walkers and all the in-betweens. The mayor was there, making a brief speech about the arts and the community, local press set up for pictures and interviews and video taping. The caste system in our small city had been put aside for this day - music's universal appeal had called in one voice to rich and poor, black and white, young and old, gay and straight, single and partnered.

The end of the afternoon brought a legend on stage, a Chicago bluesman born in a small Louisiana town in 1925. The crowd moved forward to see an 83 year old piano player, hands still agile and flying over the keyboard, voice raspy and bronchial with age. He grinned at the crowd and winked at the girls, shiny black patent leather shoes keeping time with the music, fingers never hesitating or missing. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees and made shadows on his creased face - there was no sign he felt the cold. He walked slowly and cautiously but played like a demon and the crowd cheered every chord. He never looked down at the keyboard, only out at the cluster of people gathered around him, clapping and yelling his name, dancing in the semi darkness and shivering. Henry Gray had come to town and brought a little Chicago blues with him - southern style - and the music had drawn out a city. The local musicians watched with a combination of respect and gratitude, shaking their heads and smiling with appreciation. An old woman in a wheelchair, strands of white hair curling around her face in the evening breeze and hands swollen and misshapen with arthritis, clapped with the best of them, her face alight with laughter. When her granddaughter tried to wheel her away, she pushed at the child with unexpected force and locked the chair with a sudden jerk. No! she yelled at the surprised little girl, Not when he's still playing! She threw off her lap robe and shawl and stubbornly struggled to her feet to applaud and the grandchild resignedly stood beside her, one arm around her waist for support. Henry! Henry! Henry! the old woman cheered in a shaky but loud voice, God bless the blues!