The 12 Bar Blues -- The Inside Story
It was about time these Mules found religion, and the Marin Temperance Society held a small celebration on learning that they were finally all heading to church. That would be the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in San Rafael, who inexplicably hired the Mules to close their annual retreat this past May. Since it was such an utterly unprecedented occasion, the public was invited to attend and bear witness. Of course it remained to be seen if the Unitarians would succeed in converting the Mules or if the Mules’ songs about drinking and moral turpitude would corrupt the Unitarians first.
As if an evening of scandalous swampy-tonk music wasn't enough, this show also included line dancing lessons led by the Cowtown Cowgirls. It turned out to be a fun evening all around, even if a few (OK, more than a few) of the new line dance students did occasionally (OK, more than occasionally) go astray.
The Mules closed the evening, as the often do, with keyboardist Dick Bay’s song, The Twelve Bar Blues. He stepped to the microphone and told the audience – and his surprised band members, who were hearing it for the first time – the full story behind the song:
Jimbo Lehmann & Charlie Fager at UU Marin
The Cowtown Cowgirls teach line dancing at UU Marin
The year was 1980 and Dick was on a Greyhound Bus tour, visiting friends around the northeast. On the long bus rides enroute to his first stops in DC and Manhattan he began writing lyrics for a new song. It was to be a 12 bar blues song . . . about a guy with so many problems he had to go out drinking to 12 different bars every night just to make it through the night. The song would even list the 12 bars. Dick confessed that he made up some of the bar names, but most of them were actual bars that he spotted on his trip (funny how clusters of bars seemed to spring up around every Greyhound station they stopped at).
His last stop was to visit his best friend from college, Rev. Darrell Berger, who was the minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Scituate MA. As soon as he arrived, Dick told Darrell that he had just finished a new song and asked if he could borrow the church piano to try it out. Darrell took him next door to the church and Dick played The Twelve Bar Blues for the first time ever. When he finished, Darrell said, “Coincidentally, my next sermon is going to be about alcoholism. Why don’t you stick around through the weekend and play your song during the service?” So that Sunday Darrell delivered his alcoholism sermon (while sipping a bloody Mary in the pulpit) and right before or after, Dick gave The Twelve Bar Blues its debut public performance in front of Darrell’s Unitarian congregation. Darrell, incidentally, credits his & Dick’s collaboration that day for helping launch an effective anti-teen-drinking campaign in the community.
Fast-forward back to May 2024: as Dick finished his story he thanked the audience for being there for this historic occasion, and then counted it off -- the first time The Twelve Bar Blues was played in a Unitarian Church in 44 years. We’ll be waiting to see if it has now earned its place in the next edition of the Unitarian hymnal.