Tough Times

John Brim was another great, yet largely unheralded Chicago blues singer and guitarist who traveled in some of the same circles as Jones. In 1953, Brim recorded one of the gutsiest and most political blues songs of the ’50s. “Tough Times” is a classic side of tough Chicago blues, but with a radical difference — its radical politics.

By January 1954, an economic slowdown in the United States had resulted in a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate in the black community, nearly double the jobless rate for the rest of the nation. Brim responded by warning that unemployment was getting as bad as the worst part of the Depression in 1932.

Brim’s blues are an uncompromising report from the downside of American prosperity. Yet the song does something more important than simply exposing the layoffs hitting countless workers at a time of supposed affluence. His highly personal songwriting and urgent vocals make the listener really feel the anguish of a worker whose entire life falls apart when he or she loses a job.

(estratto da Blues from the Streets of ‘The Other America’, di Terry Messman)