Popa Chubby
How'd a White Boy Get the Blues?

Here is 2000, I was over 30 and due to the great disappointment of my Metal band’s failure, I turned to Blues. A group of top-notch musicians were looking for a singer for a very, very Blues setlist. The repertoire was Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey, which read in order are already a complete menu with coffee and coffee-break and no less than 3 pieces from a guitarist I didn't know at all: Popa Chubby.

I study like never before and go to rehearsals. The guitarist was a luthier, the drummer a well-known professional, and the bassist a former colleague who had introduced me to the band. Then there was me, yes, a poor guy, eager to rock. Only if you've done Metal do you know what I mean, rock with a “k”, rockk. I set up my microphone, Shure SM58, and with a "one, two, three, four" the dances begin. I sing my parts in tune and in time, in the small space that the guitarist allows me. Since they were looking for a singer, I expected looks from the band to understand if I was doing well or if they wanted more vocal presence. Not a damn thing. The guitarist, possessed by the demon of Jimmy Hendrix, played and played, not giving a damn about the surroundings. I remember thinking about the actor Max von Sydow, who had previously played Father Merrin in the film The Exorcist. I saw him enter with the cross in his hands, repeating phrases from the breviary, driving the spirit out of the possessed guitarist, who turned his head 360 degrees and drooled green from the mouth. Instead, two hours pass and finally the rehearsal ends. After a brief consultation, they tell me these words, I swear: "You don't have a black voice." I can't respond because the color of my skin is different and perhaps I lack not only the gift of the "black" voice. I should have said goodbye, apologizing by saying "What can a white man do to have the Blues?"

Soon after, I discover that Popa Chubby had released the CD How'd a White Boy Get The Blues that same year. I decide to mark the occasion in an unusual way. I get my first tattoo on the inside of my forearm: "I Got The Blues."

And I listen to Popa Chubby letting myself be carried away by this gigantic man, also white like me. And the more I listen, the more I think of Clapton’s face, deathly white, I look at SRV with his giant picture hanging at home, and I see him white, then I remember the poor Jeff Healey, also a virtuous and white man.

Can you be white and play the Blues?

Yes, because the Blues is not colored. The Blues is an old black and white television with shaky images of fascinating broadcasts, stories that connect with our desires, endings that transform every time according to our needs.

And I assure you that Popa's record is a good record. It's not the classic Blues Rock, but there's quite a heterogeneous sound. It ranges from Daddy Played the Guitar which is a ballad with rap intervals, to Black Hearted Woman and Time is Killing me which have energy to spare. Dramatic finale with the title track highlighting voice and guitar.

I wish you a moment of distraction while walking on a peripheral sidewalk and…...