Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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always had this sly smile going on, like he had a secret that
you wish you knew. You could feel some kind of vibration in the room, and you would
go with his energy and his mood and pretty soon, man, the atmosphere would get thick.
Which is a mutually created thing with the audience. Those guys [blues artists of
portant element in blues. That element of communication. The artist
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One who hears the music understands it with a dance. 132
Songs:
- Willie Dixon
e Jackson
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C O O L IN G B O A RD
A cooling board was a wooden plank used for laying out a corpse so it could be prepared
It could be put into a wagon and used to fetch a recently deceased member of the
community. The body would be brought to the home to be laid out for viewing while
other community members built the coffin in the yard or brought food over for
the mourners.
The home with the cooling board on its porch became the place for people to gather and
grieve.
This practice persisted, due to poverty in the region, even after embalming techniques
and professional undertakers were established in the early 1800s. 133 As late as the 1930s,
Don't a man feel bad, when his baby's on the coolin' board
Don't a man feel bad, when the hearse pulls up to his door
Because embalming and other preservation methods were not used, the funeral had to be
over the eyes to
the mourners looked on as the body was removed from the cooling board and placed in
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