Hello.

Welcome to Mango Pudding Blues.

Mango Pudding Blues is a blog. For a primer, go look here. For a more involved historical perspective, go here.

This blog is about food.

No, this blog is about finding oneself through deeds, not words.

No, this blog is an eternal golden braid of intricate mathematical theorems.

No, this blog is devoted to the promotion of tap dancing.

No, this blog is the brother that’ll smother your mother.

No, this blog moves sixteen tons, and what does it get?

No, this blog simply has no respect for those in their ironically nerdy glasses who make a living as art directors or creative directors in agencies and large organizations.

No, this blog is the thinly veiled soapbox of its creator, Samuel Pepys.

No, no, no. None of those things are true. What is true is what follows, in the traditional and much-loved frequently-asked-question format. Some of these questions have, actually, been asked. Feel free to submit more, and we will append this page.

Who are you?
Ah, yes. Well, one could actually offer up all sorts of biographical data, couldn’t one? Really, one could go on at length. But instead, allow me to cut to the chase; I am, frankly, almost exactly like you. Like you, I wear ironically nerdy glasses and make a living as an art director or creative director in an agency or large organization. Also like you, I covet the IPod.

Are you as devilishly good-looking as you seem to be?
Oh, yes. Yes.

Are you really currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada?
Well, um. Yes. Yes, I am.

What’s with the name?
Ah. The name. Mango Pudding Blues is said to be the one missing song from the two 1936 hotel-room recording sessions of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. Famously believed to have sold his soul to the devil for his astounding songs, brilliant technique and weirdly long fingers, Johnson is considered by many to be the big bang of American popular music. His huge influence on artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon certainly filtered down to the young Elvis Presley, and his devoted following among early British rock ’n’ rollers is well-cataloged elsewhere. His legend casts a long shadow over rock ’n’ roll. Johnson’s records are still solid sellers today, although his entire recorded catalog consists of only a handful of songs. In a life wrapped in mystery, one of the biggest is what happened to the final song recorded on the final day of his final session. Record producer Bob “Texas” Morton noted on his packing docket that the acetate for Mango Pudding Blues didn’t get shipped from San Antonio to Columbia Records’ headquarters in New York City along with the rest because Johnson, spooked and wildcat drunk, demanded it at gunpoint immediately after it was cut and then melted in to the hot San Antonio night. When he died two years later at age 28, The original recording, his guitar and his hat were all that he left behind in his Tupelo hotel room. Muddy Waters is said to have come into possession of the recording, and years later it turned up belonging to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, who probably got it via Eric Clapton, who got it from John Mayall when he was in Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, who claimed to have won it in a poker game from Muddy. Jones was playing the record on the night of his fatal drowning in his swimming pool. Keith Richards, who once said that the first time he heard a Johnson record he thought it had two guitarists playing, wrote Sympathy For the Devil based on Mango Pudding Blues’ chord changes. Sympathy For the Devil was, of course, the song the Stones were playing at Altamont in ’69 when a member of the audience was fatally stabbed by the Hell’s Angels, and the band didn’t play the song again for years. It’s widely held that Richards spirited the record away from Jones’ house after his death, and later, disgusted by its evil vibes, gave it to Jimmy Page when he, Page, was living in Aleister Crowley’s very spooky mansion.

Page denies every owning the record, and the trail goes as cold as Johnson’s grave after that. It’s never been available to the public, even as a bootleg, and, in spite of the reward that to this day is offered by Columbia Records, now part of the Sony group of companies, it has never turned up.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with this blog. I just like the name.