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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
sad sad story , but its the blues
sad sad story , but its the blues
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GEEZER1
83 posts
Oct 21, 2010
7:04 AM
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This story would make any harp player cry
During his performance at B.B. King's Blues Club on Beale Street, "Blind Mississippi" Morris Cummings makes do with a few new harmonicas, but they can't replace his stolen collection. He isn't able to play some of his usual songs, but most people can't tell.
First, he lost his eyesight. Then he lost his two front teeth. And now, this week, Blind Mississippi Morris has lost again.
It was mostly tourists who saw his performance at B.B. King's on Beale Street on Tuesday night, but even the Memphis regulars couldn't tell that the singer had been through a rough few days.
Photo by Mike Brown
Buy this photo ยป
All of "Blind Mississippi" Morris Cummings' harmonicas -- 50 of them -- were stolen Sunday outside the Cracker Barrel on Shelby Oaks. With the help of his son Eurice Cummings, 19, he selected a few replacements at the Guitar Center on Stage Road so he could play his scheduled gig at B.B. King's Blues Club on Beale Street.
Born Morris Cummings but now just called "Morris," the bluesman, 55, who is a fixture on Beale, was having dinner with his wife Sunday at the Cracker Barrel on Shelby Oaks Drive when he returned to their 2003 Dodge Ram and found it looted.
Gone were his wife's guns, a .44-caliber Magnum Ruger and a .45-caliber Springfield; gone was their laptop, with all of its calendar listings, bookings, accounting and music files; gone was the vintage 1949 microphone he had just bought for $1,200.
And gone was his collection of 50 harmonicas, worth about $2,000.
The thieves, who left no mark of forced entry, even nabbed his disabled-parking placard.
His wife, Melody, filed a police report, but how was Morris supposed to perform without his harmonicas or a microphone? His wife compared his harmonica handicap to playing the piano using only the white keys.
He used $200 to get a microphone that he had pawned out of hock. And he was planning to pawn a guitar to be able to buy harmonicas until his 19-year-old son, Eurice, offered up $100 he had been saving to buy a new cell phone.
At Guitar Center in Bartlett this week, father and son bought four harmonicas -- in the keys of A, C, D and G; Morris had found two new brass reeds, in the keys of E and F, at home, and could fit them into blown-out harmonicas. The total was $100.47.
His son handed over the cash and then dug into his pockets to scrounge for two quarters. When he got his change, he put it in his father's hand.
"You need three pennies?" he joked with the bittersweetness of the blues.
Morris nodded, "Every little bit helps," and then tucked the coins into the breast pocket of his red plaid jacket, which was held together by a diaper pin.
While they were inside, the truck was being guarded by his wife and Tuxedo, their black-and-white pit bull.
So there was Morris, at B.B. King's on Tuesday night, sorting through six harmonicas when he usually needs 14. The loss meant he couldn't play some songs, such as "Singing the Blues," which requires an F-sharp; he laughed at the irony there, as Dinah Washington's "What A Difference A Day Makes" played.
He got onto his stool on stage and talked about the rain that had fallen that day.
"Let the rain wash it all away," he said. "A rainy day is a good day for the blues."
During a break, sipping on cranberry juice, he said, "The blues is about walking through life and bringing it out of yourself when you get on the stage. That's not something people can take away from me. Just makes me stronger."
He sighed, fidgeted with his straw, and added: "I'd like to know something else, to be honest, but I probably couldn't handle it. Bad stuff happens, no reason, no warning. I can't complain. That's my life, all the life I've ever known."
The gig paid $100.
-- Richard Morgan:901- 529-2774
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ZackPomerleau
1202 posts
Oct 21, 2010
7:11 AM
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Sad for anyone. The person(people) who stole his gear is a disgrace to humanity.
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Honkin On Bobo
427 posts
Oct 21, 2010
7:19 AM
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There has to be some especially bad juju that attaches to anyone stealing the tools another man uses to earn a living and especially a musician. There just has to......for there to be anything right with the universe.
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tookatooka
1814 posts
Oct 21, 2010
7:31 AM
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There's a nice clip of Morris playing here. Couldn't embed, it was disabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQCCXNzY8v4
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