Tuesday, April 25, 2006

 

Positive About Robert Cray

joeb
Did Robert Cray get me out
of a bad relationship?
I was a college junior, living in Vermillion, South Dakota, decidedly a very white community. I was DJ-ing on the brand new campus FM, KAOR. I primarily played 1980's alternative and new wave music as that's what I was primarily interested in at the time, the top 40 music of the period boring me to tears. Going through our record library (yes, it was all vinyl!) before my shift I came upon record by Robert Cray called Who's Been Talkin'. I had grown up with some blues and sixties R&B, so I gave it a play on my show. It was bluesy but with just a tinge of the Memphis R&B sound of the 1960's. In short, I loved the whole album.

On doing some research, I found that Robert Cray was a lot younger than most of the blues artists I knew of. I've never found blues to be old man's music, but Robert Cray breathed new life into what I thought was a dead form of music. Additionally he had grown up as a military dependent like me and I found an immediate connection. Who's Been Talkin' was actually Robert Crays first release from about 5 years earlier and his fourth album, the well received Strong Persuader, had been released recently and was actually making some waves in the charts with the single Smokin' Gun.

While Stevie Ray Vaughn had recorded a number of records to this point, I always thought it was Robert Cray who started the blues revival of the late 80's and early 90's. Vaughn blues tended to be a whilwind, he tried to fill space with the most notes humanly possible. He was better and more creative at that then any guitarist I've ever heard. Cray paid more attention to the space between the notes, letting notes hang for a moment, not playing as the listener anticipated what he was going to do next. I like SRV and acknowledge how important he was to the blues revivial. I love Robert Cray.

Over the next couple of years I bought all of Cray's recordings. To this day, my favorites are his first three, the three before he became famous with Strong Persuader. I play a stripped down version of the title track to Who's Been Talkin', the first song I ever figured out for myself how to play on guitar. I've continued to buy his recordings, and thought I've not been as enthusiastic about later efforts I've liked them all.
joeb
Midnight Stroll - 1991


His music has meant a lot to me over the years. His music was also a favorite of my ex-wife's. We bought all of his recordings on cassette, bought them again when the became available on CD, I bought them again on CD after she got all of the music after the divorce.

In 1991 he relased Midnight Stroll. It marked a turn from traditional blues to Memphis soul and R&B. I prefer Cray playing straight-up blues, but this is a fine album musically. Emotionally, it somehow touches on every relationship I've ever been in and how I dealt with them. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that there were songs about my ex-wife and first girlfriend after the divorce on this record. One, Labor of Love, had a direct effect on a relationship:

Labor of love
Robert Cray

I'm spending too much time with her problems
Worryin' 'bout what she might think
Her hold on my heart
You know it drives me crazy
And buddy I'm on the brink

Thought I'd worked my way through all of our problems
The jealousy, anger and pain
But this feelin' I got
It's so dog-gone desperate, man
I'll have to do it all over again

I'm awake late at night, an emotional fool
Makin' vows to myself that I can't keep
Another know it all lonesome man of the world
Who can't stop cryin' himself to sleep

If push comes to shove
Seems like this
Labor of Love
Is just to much work for me

I can't stop thinkin' about her
It's a sad but natural fact
She's a devil and a saint
And a whole lot more that I ain't
I want this monkey off of my back

Now people, bad love's and addiction
Some as cocaine and cheap whiskey, too
When you're a prisoner of love
That's all that you think of
You act confused
And you aint got a clue


I was dating 2C in early 1995 and after six pretty good weeks, things started to go sour. I put up with a lot of shit, though I was getting some really good shit in return. That's how I justified it. My job started going in the toilet, I wasn't spending any time with my friends, my life was sort of falling apart. I didn't want to change anything that would take me away from 2C. I was in a bad relationship but told myself it was all worth it. In one way it was. In every other it wasn't. Not even close.

I was on my couch listening to the Midnight Stroll album one evening, Labor of Love came on and I thought about my situation with 2C. The phone rang, it was 2C. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I was thinking about her. She asked for specifics. I told her I was thinking that she wasn't worth all of the trouble. I don't remember where the conversation went after that. We'd had my shouting matches over our time together, one in Leo's Lounge in Vermillion that I wouldn't be suprised if people still talk about (think the scene at the hockey game in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy). But we somehow managed to have a regular conversation. She probably needed something from me and had to make nice until she got it. I probably did it, whatever it was.

We somehow managed to stay together for another month or so. I broke up with her on the phone while I was at work. I went home after work and grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam, layed on the couch and listened to Robert Cray. I wasn't so much angry or depressed, I was simply relieved. I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.

I moved on quickly after that taking a job and spending the next 14 months in Iowa. I sometimes wonder if Iowa was worse than 2C, but I made my choice and I don't regret it. The lyrics of Robert Cray didn't cause me to break up with her, but it did make me see what was going on in my life. There's no way Cray could have known my exact situation and yet he wrote a song about it. It's a univeral relationsip problem, I supposed everyone has gone through it at some point. It's standard fodder for a blues song, but I couldn't see the situation I was in until I heard a song about it.

BOJ

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