If you are new to Blues music or like it but never understood the whys and wherefores, here are some fundamentals:

Most blues begin with "Woke up this morning..."

"I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin unless you stick something in the next line like "I got a good woman with the meanest face in town."

The blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that sort of rhymes: "I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like a junkyard dog and she weigh 500 pound."

The blues is not about choice. If you stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch. Ain't no way out.

Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broke-down trucks. No Volvos, BMWs or sport utility vehicles.

Blues transportation: a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

Teenagers can't sing the blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the blues. Blues adulthood means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

Blues can take place in New York City but not Hawaii or anywhere in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle... prob'ly just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the blues. You can't have the blues any place that don't get rain.

A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is.

Breakin' your leg because you were skiing is not the blues. Breakin' your leg cause a gator chompin' on it is.

You can't have no blues in an office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot. Sit by the dumpster.

Good places for the blues: highway jailhouse empty bed bottom of a whiskey glass.

Bad places for the blues: Nordstom's gallery openings Ivy League institutions.

Nobody will believe it's the blues if you wear a suit, unless you happen to be an old person and you slept in it.

Do you have a right to sing the blues? Yes, if--
you older than dirt
you blind
you shot a man in Memphis (or Reno--Johnny Cash)
you can't be satisfied.
No, if--
you have all your teeth
you once were blind but now can see
the man in Memphis lived
you have a 401K or a trust fund.

Blues ain't a matter of color but a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could have. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.

The following are not blues beverages:
Perrier
Chardonnay.

If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the blues. Other blues beverages are--
cheap wine
whiskey or bourbon
muddy water
black coffee.