GARY CLARK,JR.

Blues Project 2012
“This is the best crowd I ever
played for that wasn’t drunk!” Blues Mandolin
Maestro Rich DelGrosso quipped
last August 17. Bittersweet – a rowdy blues
audience can gratify a player, but ours was
mostly cancer patients grabbing joy and
escape as they fight for their very lives.
The Project Blues shows at LifeCare
Alliance in Columbus, Ohio, were redeeming
for both the players
and our audience. The
next day, we did a second
concert for donors
and sponsors who help
support this mission.
BluesWax.com
reported on 2011’s
Project Blues concerts,
2012 was the third
series, but my first time.
Before I left Columbus
I knew I wanted to tell
you about it.
When I was five in
1954 I sat on my front
stairs, enjoying my
safe, sunny, sheltered
world in Brookline,
Massachusetts. An old
man, probably younger
than I am now, limped by on crutches with
dignified determination. Childishly candid,
I asked, “What happened to you?” He
winced even as his mouth almost smiled
at my innocence. He looked into my eyes
and explained in a hoarse, tremulous
voice I can still hear with perfect sound
memory, “I had Polio.” It was hard for him
to speak.
Only one year later, Medical Science
produced the first Polio vaccine, and I got
mine at my excellent public school. In
1955 public health care was not an “entitlement”
to be weighed socially or politically.
Little Bobby didn’t think about that,
but I remembered the crippled old man
steady dragging the legs he once walked
with, with his arms and wooden crutches. I
even craved the sting of my Polio needle
and wiggled my toes in my U.S. Keds in
30 BLUES REVUE
hope that I might always be able to. I
expected fulfillment of the other human
aspirations of 1955: We would “go to the
moon,” and “cure cancer.”
I am still brokenhearted that not only
did we fail on the cancer part, but our
world is more toxic than ever. The clients
of LifeCare Alliance and the Columbus
Cancer Center, as well as Project Blues’
DIUNNA GREENLEAF, KENNY “BEEDY EYES” SMITH, MARTY ROMIE,
JOHN DEL TORO RICHARDSON, BOB MARGOLIN, AND TOM HOLLAND
musicians friends, families, and they themselves
still face this cruel disease. Cancer
is so ubiquitous that we all are touched
and have a personal story. One of mine,
briefly, is that my mother passed from
Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1997. I rode
it down with the woman who brought me
into the world, sheltered me, and taught
me how to love and live. I watched her
lose a little bit of herself each day until she
was gone.
I have musician friends today, you all
know them too, who battle both cancer in
their bodies and the health care industry.
While I don’t have the money to be a philanthropist,
or even be secure myself as
the cost of living rises, I take opportunities
to donate my time and music.
I was thrilled and honored to perform
at Project Blues with old and new friends:
Diunna Greenleaf, Kenny “Beedy Eyes”
Smith, Bob Stroger, Dave Specter,
Omar Coleman, Columbus' own Marty
Romie and Brian Duress, Dave West,
Rich DelGrosso, John Popovich, Sean
Carney, Anson Funderburgh, and Christian
Dozzler. Jonn Del Toro Richardson and
Tom Holland hosted and turned our gang
into an entertaining revue. Onstage, we
had magic moments where the blues
transported us all to a place where
nothing hurts.
All the musicians had to do was
close our eyes and look inside to our personal
losses for motivation to push back
against cancer. And when our eyes
opened, we were inspired and moved by
Columbus’ cancer crusaders right in front
of us.
When I arrived for sound check
before the first show, I had a very powerful
experience taking the tour of LifeCare
Alliance provided by President and CEO
Chuck Gehring. Today, treatment and
patient life services are less affordable
than ever to cancer victims who suddenly
have less earning power when they need
it most. Cancer centers in the U.S. are
underfunded and closing. LifeCare
Alliance is a model of “find a way” in a
world of “don’t get sick but if you do,
die quick.”
PHOTOGRAPHY © DUSTY SCOTT