Blues Hats

Not to get all Jerry Seinfeld on you guys here, but “what is up with those?” Sitting in my car outside the place I get my coffee this afternoon were two Low-down Blues Cats, catching a Caffeine Buzz-On, no doubt, in the unusually warm winter sun. Of course, both were wearing the obligatory black Blues Hat beret with matching faded black leather jackets.

From where I parked the car I knew that I was going to have to walk past these two. From my vantage point of more than twenty feet away I picked them out as Blues musicians. I just knew… I knew just as strongly as if they were mimes -- they’re faces painted white, wearing hair like Shields and Yarnell.

Like a gay mans lispy mustache, nothing marks a white Blues Musician more clearly than his hat, where besides just a standard black beret, the blues code also allows for a “Newsboy” or a “Fedora” to be worn in its stead. No “Westerns” or “Homburgs” allowed; no “Porkpies”, “Bowlers”, “Buckets” or “Baseball caps”. Apparently you can get special dispensation to wear a straw “Panama” hat, and for the African American blues Musician, a “Kofia”, but that type of hat-rule bending is generally looked down upon by true Real True white keepers of the blues.

Like the two who were sitting outside of the coffee shop…

Like the two I was going to have to walk by to get my afternoon cup of coffee.

Five feet from their table, I stop. They’re working on a set list for their gig later that night.

“Mind if I ask you all a question?” I ask to the one with a goatee.

“What the hell is up with you people and your hats? Are you all just covering up your prematurely balding Blues heads or is it part of some National Blues Musician Collective dress code. Do those stupid, stupid, stupid fucking beanies come with your union dues or do you have to supply your own?”

“Cause do you realize that because of those hats I can’t even hear your music? That you are making it hard to appreciate the greatness of Muddy Waters or Howlin Wolf or Lighning Hopkins, great musicians who never wore a beret?

“Your HATS ARE KILLILNG MY AMERICAN HERITAGE!!!” I screamed, before leaving them to their afternoon. They didn’t say a word, but just sat there with their mouths open and pens frozen still on the set list.

Of course it could have been worse. They could have been wearing the Blues Hat, in tandem with The Black Leather Blues Vest. I never would have left the car if that had been the case. No telling what I might have gotten myself into.