beale st.  grew blues boys

like share croppers tended crops

out of necessity like

life depended on it

beale st. grew blues boys

blues boys

like hard times grew celebrations

of overcoming praise of existence

signs of persistence

chords of resistance

plucked from scraps spun into gold

we still here music

kicking at life like a stubborn mule

them the blues overstanding being

broken how you carry on

bruises overstood in song

delivered giving praise

you will never understand

if you ain’t ate the blues

for breakfast lunch & dinner

cause nothing else could

feed you danced away sorrow

laughed until tears dried

picked up the pieces and made

confetti celebrating you can

talk it but you don’t can’t

ain’t never gonna know it

like you don’t know limbo

celebration of survival

blues rolled like a river out

the delta musical prophets

rolled out the sound that

carried a song that told a

story that refused to die

so it painted itself blue

tells the truth is alive

in the middle of southern nights

that have rolled down highways

traveled on railways to northern shores

flowing from east coast dives

the water songs from share croppers sons

bb was one grown in the

shadow of the plantation

rose from sharecropping

followed louie armstong to show stopping

riley b king took a new name for a new incarnation

left the rudeness of kill you young poverty

to become king of the blues

carrying culture from the water

from the delta grown on beale st.

where they grow the blues

took the song that told the story

that refused to die painted blue

truth flowing

from a beale st blues boy

b string breaking

real american artist forged in the belly

kicking at its sides with chords

so blue they broke through

to where the truth of america resides

music is the truth its life

no where to hide

15 blues grammies

blues foundation hall of fame

rock & roll hall of fame

billboard best  musicians of all time

the soloist

blues is life it tells the story

just like any other song

t bone burnette says he gave us

everything all that mattered

all that meant something

to us darker than blue still

singing the blues the truth is alive

t bone says all that

remains is the duty to

keep his grave clean