This a fun Blues song, named "Dubya Lamentational, Lame Duck Blues." The chorus is "I've got those low-down, 'Dubya Lamentational, Lame Duck Blues.'" I know, I know I should have pulled back on the chorus with my guitar, because it drowns out the words. But, no big deal, you can substitute "lamentational," for anything you want, including several words.

The song has been placed on opednews.com, just for the fun of it. It is always fun to move the words around to make the song work. I think it does. The song is in the Key of G, but I slam an A+ chord before the "G." and then use the C7 chord and walk that chord up to its D7 position, a simple press of the lowest keys bar chorded up 2 frets above the G, gets the lead-in chord to the G. Pretty easy to do, but it takes work to get the proper rhythm. There are probably other Blues songs written in the same style, which includes the blow-you-away scene in the Chicago Blues Club, in the movie "Adventures in Baby Sitting." I hate playing harp blues without a background guitar. I think, next time, I'll use the computer to run a basic loop, and then pull in the singing and harping behind that.

The harpman, in the Adventures of Babysitting, uses a C Chromatic. On this song, I use the C harp in the cross harp position of G. I generally cross harp my blues licks using the second chord in a key progression. Example, G C D, is the key of G. I use a Korean diatonic harp in the key of C. It didn't turn out that great. The problem I had, though, was uploading it to youtube on my 26.4 connection, but it was worth it.

I hate harp racks, and I would have been better off to have played the chords into my Mac and played it back, with the harp. Sassie loves to sing THE BLUES. Below is my words as it is now. The song is (c) copywrited 2008,) but it would be fun to do at any anti-Bush crowd. Here are the words, and have fun.

To find more songs by Sassie Rae-Joplin, the greatest blues dog in the world, do a search on youtube for okharpman.

Dubya Lamentational Lame Duck Blues

I've been sleeping every night!
God tells me that I'm right.
I've got a sociopathic think.
We're down in the wine room to drink!

See, All my lies is no big deal!
Don't give a damn how many kids we kill!.
Ain't no wine goin' down the sink;
Me and Barney's down here to drink!

Watchin' Olbermann, and you will hear;
A bunch of lies in your left ear!
Ain't no TV anchor gonna change the way I think.
We watch FOX and we all drink.

Hey, "impeach me now" - I'll spit in your face!
Our Constution's, old and it's a disgrace!.
It takes a lot of guts to start a war;
Getting filthy rich is my reward.

See, when I retire, I'll damn sure gloat!
Start my libry' with "My Pet Goat."
About Iraq I've already thunk!
I'm plastered in my wine room, ...and I'm drunk, drunk, drunk!

Chorus
Because I've got those low-down Presidential LAMENTATIONAL Lame Duck ! --Dubya lame-duck, Presidential Blues, Blues, Blues!

You can go here to see the song on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMuSntaWOTo
(C) 2008 Dale W. Hill








You can use this blog to ask Mr. Hill (Papa Dale) anything you want. I'll do my best to answer them. Most of the Old Blues songs are hard to understand, because of, the poor quality of the media on which those old Blues songs were made; it is hard to understand them. Using, Jimmy Rodgers, though, is a different ball game. They recorded him back in the late 20s and 30, 31, 32, were recorded on the best RCA equipment available. Not only that, through modern computers, his songs are bright and pretty easy to understand.

This is a fireworks stand. It is open 7 days before July 4th and 3 days afterward, ... state law. You will see Krysten, one half American Indian - Kiowa. Her daddy owns his construction business. The father remembers me coming into the classes and telling them Bert and Ernie stories and taking their pictures. And singing fun songs.



Now notice the caution sign on the back of these fireworks. Look below and you will see, "Made In China." Now you will see a far away look, with the US Flag. All of the firecrackers and flags came in a kit to open their July 4th stand. Now, here is the question. Should someone be charged with a criminal act, for burning a US flag that is made in China? Discuss this in class. My opinion is, that it is absurd to file charges on anyone burning a US Flag. Flags are replaceable; children are not.

Do this if you are having trouble with understanding the Blues you have: 1)Write down the "artist+song+lyrics and plug it into google." Don't get hung up on the commercial stuff. Go beyond that to about page 3, and you should find the lyrics.



I didn't sleep well last night, so I slept today, and then didn't go to the gathering at Carnegie. I am glad I stayed home, because Nathan and Eunice called. Seems that they will be visiting Thailand soon, so you will get to meet my youngest son. Great.

Look at the picture above. That is Grandma Cella with her grandkids. Iris, Seth and Reed. Notice behind her the Tipi. They have them all around the arena. In order to take pictures of Iris in her American Indian apparel, I would have had to been over there in the morning. I was sleeping then.

But they all dropped by, and Darrin, Jill, and Reed, went back to Edmond. The rest stayed here and popped firecrackers, made in China.



It was 11:30 when our Lawton group left, so I am putting this up and it is well after 1 am. Sassie watched the fireworks and wasn't scared. Our other dog, Honey Bun, was scared to death and hid on the other side of the house. Now, .... for the BIG TIME SURPRISE. Would you like to meet a real Bluesman? Well, here he is with my son, Darrin.

This is Taj Mahal. Darrin and Chris met with him, because they are working on a documentary of Jesse Edie Davis. On one of Edie's albums, Leon Russell did the Keyboards, and on the other one, Eric Clapton did some guitar work. Blues players find a way to get together. Darrin and Chris and Taj talked alot about Edie, and Taj assured Darrin that Edie was a man who knew his Blues and wanted to get it done right before they recorded it.



I know I haven't written enough about playing The Blues on a guitar, a Uke, or a harmonica. The Blues is, first and foremost, about learning to play the instrument that you have decided to play, in a Blues Way. If you go back and look at Edie Davis, you will see him holding his guitar up and playing The Blues.

Playing the Blues is very important. Playing The Blues IS NOT playing the melody of a song. It really has little to do with playing the melody. It has to do with playing notes, a string, one half step up above the melody note, on a guitar, and then pushing that string inward to get the Blues Effect.

The same with the Uke, Mandolin and even the banjo. When you talk about guitars, a guitar is often referred to as "Your Axe!" Isn't that funny?

Some dude comes over and asks, "Well, what Axe do you use." So you go to the back of your tent and bring out an Axe and you bludgeon him to death!

No, what he is talking about is what kind of guitar do you use: Fender (What Model?), Les Paul, Martin, all different names. Tonight, the band that was playing on Jay Leno, the lead singer, who is about my age, was playing an Ovation, like mine, only a newer model than mine is.

Now, playing the Blues on a harp, is a whole different ball game. I'm going to tell you a secret that you cannot share with anyone else, okay? Us Blues players don't want just anybody and everybody knowing about how we play the Blues.

In a Blues song, you play the 3 dominant chords. In the key of C, that would be C, F and G7. Now, here is the secret; a harmonica blues player WILL NOT be playing a C harp, but will be playing the middle chord harp or cross-harp position, in this case, it would be in the key of F. Instead of playing normally, you start pulling in on reeds instead of blowing out, blowing out on the reed you would normally do to play the melody. You also have to learn to play the harp, two different ways; one by using the pucker lips method and the other is by using the tongue to block the reeds you don't want played.

Now A. Cec, said that he thought maybe all harps are made in China. That is not true, but close to being true. I just got in the mail, yesterday, two Ace American Hohner harps, that say they are made in China. So the Ace is made in China, but most of the better harps and more expensive harps are made in China, Japan, Germany and the United States. I still have some working Japanese Suzuki harps that I have had for 20 years.

With the Ace harp, you get a little piece of paper that tells you how to use your tongue to play the harp. Blues players, use more the pucker method. But, one look at the instruction pamphlet, you know it is made in China, because Chinese have a hard time getting things right, in English. This is the last help part of the instruction pamphlet and what it says. Hee, Hee.




"12) Blow' the up arrow Draw for down one and the length of the length of the arrow Gives that of the one." Huh? Read that again, pllease? Blow' the up arrow Draw for down one and the length of the length of the arrow Gives that of the one."Help! Can you understand that? I don't know what that means, do you? Blow' the up arrow Draw for down one and the length of the length of the arrow Gives that of the one." Ha, ha, ha. That is nonsense. Jay Leno is a comedian and he loves to find Chinese directions that are all screwed up, when they try to write the English for the directions.

So now you know my secret, so go out and buy an Ace American Harp for 4 dollars and learn to play the melody and The Blues.

Because everyone else got to write about a Blues song, I want to write about one. This song is called, "I Hope!" and is sung and written by The Dixie Chicks. It is the last song on their album. I would say most of the songs on their CD, which only costs about 10 dollars in America, are Contemporary or Progressive Country. All of the songs are good, and the ladies all studied music and are great musicians. The two sisters play several instrument, but one, generally, plays the banjo and the other one plays the violin. Of course, duh, the one left has taken voice lessons for a long time.

But the "I Hope!" song is a Blues song, while the others are not? How would I know? Well, the lead singer is singing and the other two singers are singing in the background, "I Hope! I Hope!" behind her. What did we learn about blues songs? They are repetitious, and this is the way this song is. It is different than all the other songs on the album.

After they sing the song, and it comes to the end of it, the lead guitarist, I'd have to look on the CD to see who is the lead guitarist, starts hitting some vicious blues guitar licks. None of them are the same. Some are short licks and others are longer licks. But during that end, all of the music becomes, straight Blues. The ending is kind of like Merle Haggards, "I Think I'll Stay Home and Drink." Only this song is just the opposite and is a Blues "hopefull" song that has positive lyrics about wanting the best for everyone.

So, ... "I Hope!" "I HOPE!" "I HOPE!" by the end of this class you will be able to listen to a song, and instantly know, like I can, when a song is really a blues song. After all, this is part of learning about The United States' Culture. "I HOPE!" too, that when you watch a movie, you will listen to the music and can tell what kind of music is playing in the background. Did everyone go to Wynstin Marselas's homepage? You should, so you can hear some jazz, "I HOPE!"