How Jimmy got the blues ( a tragedy in too many parts)

Many people have asked me how a white middle class kid from Hucknall got the blues? Now surley I could make some obvious pun about working down the pit, but alas that is not the case, I have probably never done a day's hard work in my life. I suppose to tell the story properly we need to talk about a life changing incident. You will have to forgive me if you have heard this before (according to some the whole of Nottingham knows this story). To do this we have to go back 21 years ........ Young Jimmy had already taken up the lifelong struggle of trying to play guitar, never knew why I wanted to play but something just appealed to me about guitars. Not the usual bullshit that I wanted to meet girls and be in a band, I have ended up in bands, but women never come and talk to me at gigs, just blokes wanting to ask boring fucking questions about guitars. I can't say I still have those feelings now surrounded by a shop full of them, but back then there was a mysterious something that attracted me to a piece of wood with six strings and some magnets on and a box of valves attached to a speaker. So anyways. Here I am 14 years old struggling with the guitar, playing the music of the day to no avail. Que a rather eventful family holiday in Spain. I've never really been one for speed based motor thrills, so imagine my fun when I was almost press ganged into going go karting, big fast ones and me with the co ordination of Bambi. It was never going to work out well, in fact a broken ankle, split scalp, black testicles confirmed this to me. Could things get worse? Yopu should never ask this!- My father Derek, a small angry Yorkshire ripper look alike, was convinced that I had not in fact broken my ankle ( I hadn't it was a rather nasty double fracture that has left me walking funny to this day). In fact so convinced was my small father, that he made me walk on the fucker without crutches- Yelling at me to "stop being such a puff" and uttering another gem" In the Tour De France they'd put you back on your bike". Needless to say the leg was, to use a medical term fucked and I spent the summer in plaster, getting very bored...... But then I discovered something a rather odd cd that no one ever listened to, in fact I think Derek got it free with a cd player, moaned that it all sounded the same and set it aside. The CD in question was "The Incredible Chess CD" - a compilation of 1950's Chess recording artists. To say that it turned me on my head would be an understatement. I would go as far to say that after that point nothing had any importance in my life for the next 21 years other than black american blues music (and boozing, and trying to sleep with women that are actually sane). Who was Howlin Wolf and why did he sound like he had broken the microphone with his voice, why was Muddy Waters singing abot "Two Trains". It was like music from Mars to me. Nothing has really had the same impact since. The thing that really flipped me out on that CD was the realisation that I could play some of this on my guitar... Dunno how or why. But the first thing I could copy bits of and it actully sounded good was Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby".. It's been a downward spiral ever since (35 years old living on a matress in a bedsit- good blues collection though) Here's Lowell