Musical grifter and common-man poet, Ray Wylie Hubbard, showed up on the Letterman Show and wove his gritty-poet magic last night.  With his son Lucas on Les Paul, Oklahoman Hubbard (heir-apparent to the “Willie” look-and-feel) and band regaled with Mother Blues off of his critically-acclaimed album The Grifter’s Hymnal.  The true-story tale of Mother Blues and the groove of the band captivated all, and especially Letterman.

Mother Blues is a “mostly factual” account of Hubbard’s days paying his dues in a Dallas nightclub filled with “dealers, gamblers, strippers, young white hipsters and grizzled black blues legends.”  Lucas gets a mention in the song, along with his mother and Hubbard’s wife/manager, Judy.  Hubbard has said this about the song and club:  “I saw Lightnin’ Hopkins there, and Freddie King would show up, and we’d play poker upstairs. I’ve got a picture of me playing poker with Freddie King when I was 22. He played a game called ‘Lucy Duecey,’ which was like Seven Stud only whenever a two would come up the next card would be wild. It was really called ‘Freddie King Wins Every Time’ because everybody was drinking and nobody could figure it out! There’s a little fiction in that song, but not a lot. All the important parts are pretty much true.  I heard [my wife Judy] say one time that the days she keeps her gratitude higher than her expectations, she has really good days. I filed that away in my head, and it came back to me when we were playing this song live one time, before I really had an ending for it. I told the crowd, ‘I’m really grateful to you all for showing up, and I’m grateful for being here with Rick and my kid … the days I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations are really good days.’ And it seemed like the right way to end the song.”  We couldn’t agree more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r92RkIKm6Wc