Hugh Laurie: Can a white man really sing the blues?

Hugh Laurie will release a blues album in May called Let Them Talk, for which he has just played his first preview concert in New Orleans. Although he has been a talented pianist since his Footlights and Fry and Laurie days, his first major musical foray is raising eyebrows.

Will Laurie’s blues album actually be any good? He is an Anglo-Saxon male educated at Eton College playing a style of music traditionally the preserve of elderly African-American gentlemen, usually from the Deep South, telling of lives of privation and pain.

Laurie, replete with admirable humility, said:

I was not born in Alabama in the 1890s. I’ve never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar. I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south.

He explained that he wanted to popularise the genre:

I could never bear to see this music confined to a glass cabinet, under the heading Culture: Only To Be Handled By Elderly Black Men. That way lies the grave, for the blues and just about everything else: Shakespeare only performed at the Globe, Bach only played by Germans in tights.

But can a white man really sing the blues? Or rather, should music born out of a racialised crucible by historically disadvantaged and oppressed communities be dabbled in by others? If we are honest, such appropriation has often been naked cultural piracy and exploitation for fiscal motives. Elvis, Justin Timberlake and British soul singer Joss Stone, to name but a few, are often cited as the chief culprits of this musical phenomenon. But does it, and should it, matter?

In Laurie’s case, I think his imitation should be applauded rather than frowned upon. As understandable as it is to think that you have to have suffered to be able to sing music born out of suffering, that is sometimes not the case. Often, in our rush for peerless authenticity from our musicians, we overlook their actual musical ability (or lack of). The rapper 50 Cent is the perfect case in point. His sole qualification for his superstar status was that he got shot nine times, giving him impeccable ghetto credentials.

As tempting as it would be to denigrate Laurie for his attempt, and to invoke Wesley Snipe’s famous riposte to Woody Harrelson’s character in the film White Men Can’t Jump: “You can listen to Jimi (Hendrix), but you can’t hear Jimi”, we should instead salute Laurie’s versatility, his courage and his honesty. From what I’ve heard of the album, Laurie really can sing the blues with conviction.

The final word goes to the old school hip-hop legend and lyrical genius Rakim. As he so memorably said on his magnum opus I Know You Got Soul, “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at.”