Singin' the blues

Wheeler and Weldon talk about how all American music, other than classical and Native American genres, comes from the blues. Jazz, country, rock 'n' roll, even hip-hop, funk and rap all have roots in the blues. They tell the kids how many years ago — before there were TVs, VCRs, CDs or Walkmans — people, especially the blacks in the South, used to get together after a hard day's work. They used homemade musical instruments — "guitars" made from cigar boxes, "drums" made from washboards and cow bells, "horns" made from jugs.

Wheeler and Weldon have some of their own homemade instruments that the kids get to try. Wheeler's homemade guitar — it's called a diddley bo, he explains — uses a cigar box and a pool cue handle. But he and Weldon also made an electric guitar out of an outlet box and some pipe, and Wheeler shows off a one-string electric broom handle made by a friend in Mississippi. So, they explain, you can use pretty much anything.

"The blues are all about improvisation," Wheeler tells the kids and then makes them look up that word in the dictionary. "To compose or recite without preparation," the kids read. To take what you have and make the most of it.

That's what blues music is all about, says Wheeler. Back when people got together to play their homemade instruments, they also made up songs about their day, about their mean boss, or how their girlfriend left them. "Sometimes they would have contests to see who has the worst problems," says Weldon. But then they made something good out of it.

"They made up something good, like music, from something that feels bad, like anger or frustration," says Wheeler. "Improvisation is what everyone has to do to survive, but no one teaches it in the classroom."

Then the kids get their own harmonicas, and Wheeler and Weldon teach them how to play some simple blues melodies. And there are smiles all around.

"This is cooool," proclaims Casey Wright. "I was really getting it on with the beat," added Cody Haldago. And he termed Wheeler and Weldon "the most awesome."

Emily Randquist also loved getting her own harmonica. "I played my grandfather's once. But now I can go to my own room and turn on the radio and listen and play along."

And that's what it's all about, says Wheeler: letting kids know it's OK to get the blues — and that it's fun to play the blues. "Any time you feel mad, bad, sad, upset, go play your harmonica for five minutes," says Wheeler. "I guarantee you'll feel better."

It seems like a simple formula, but Wheeler and Weldon have seen it work time after time. Since they've been doing this program, they've given out more than 5,000 harmonicas.

And what's interesting, says Weldon, is that after they've talked about the blues, after they've played the blues, "the kids open up with problems that they may have not talked about in any other way."