The blues is an expression of feeling, therefore something you should respect. It came out of hardships most of us can't imagine.

The first to tell you this and many other fact-filled stories is legendary blues mandolinist Yank Rachell. Children's Express recently interviewed Rachell in his Indianapolis home about his life and his music.

Rachell was born on a farm in Brownsville, Tenn., 85 years ago. There was no electricity, no "high-tech buttons to turn the water on. . . . You had to get coal oil to put in the lamps."

But as it would turn out, he didn't have any electricity in his music either.

Rachell has been strumming for more than 75 years. He got his first mandolin (a small instrument that is tuned in fifths, like a violin, and is picked or strummed) when he was about 8 years old by trading a pig he got for his birthday.

Now, this pig that Rachell received from his parents was supposed to be saved until it got big enough to provide breakfast, lunch, dinner, and then some. But young Yank, walking down one of the dusty roads near his home, heard some nice music coming from a curious instrument played by a man on a porch.

"I said, `Mister, what is that you playing?' He said, `Mandolin, son.' And I said, `Well, I sure like it.' He said, `Let me sell it to you.' I said, `I ain't got no money.' "

Yank asked if he could play it - "I couldn't play nothing, but it sounded good to me 'cause I ain't never saw one" - and he fell in love. Although Yank had no money, he remembered his pig, and he ran back home, put him in a sack and took him to the man's home. "The man knew what (the pig) would be one day. I didn't know. I didn't care. All I wanted was that mandolin. So I took it over and gave him the pig."

Rachell played his mandolin whenever he could. "That mandolin is a terrible thing if you can't play it," he says, explaining his parents' lack of enthusiasm for his new hobby. After a few days, his mother asked him where the pig was. He pretended to look and then said, "I ain't seen that pig nowhere."

His mother was able to put the two together and instead of tarnishing his bottom, as she at first intended to do, she said, "I'm not gonna whip you. This fall when we harvest meat, we eat the meat and you eat that thing."

That was OK with Rachell. From then on he became a nuisance to his parents but was having a pretty good time making music.

Took the blues overseas

Rachell started his career just "banging" on the mandolin. He played in several jug bands - groups that combined blues and ragtime. By 1929, that banging turned into success as Yank recorded his first album.

That was also the first time he heard his voice, which made him feel "better" because he knew he could "do better."

Rachell says he never wrote down a song - "I'd go in there and it would come to me just like that. All them words would match up."

He played with Sonny Boy Williamson and many others - "I met so many different people, musicians. A lot of them I forget their name." He has been all over Europe, also Russia and Greece, and toured the United States dozens of times.

He rightfully brags, "I got out 30 or 40 records, but they all mine. I always made my own songs up myself.

"They call me the legendary blues player of Indianapolis."

Rachell once tried to play guitar until a man said, "Yank, you a good guitar player, but you finger too fast." So he went back to the mandolin. "You got to finger fast to play that. You don't have to do all that on guitar . . . chop up the music . . . that don't make it sound no good."

Sweet and low

Rachell states that "blues was "blues" until the electric guitar came into circulation in the late 1930s. Blues is meant to be played soft, he says. "Music is sweet when you play a low tone so you can hear it and understand it."

Rachell compared how blues "is" and how it's supposed to be. He talked of guitar players who play too loud and too fast.

"Everyone you see with a guitar (say) they are playing the blues. They ain't playing no blues! They playing rock 'n' roll and calling it the blues.

"I'll show them how to play the blues . . . real soft and tone so people can talk and hear the music and eat and enjoy themselves."

Rachell has been playing so long that he has gotten to the point where he doesn't care to play much anymore. He can't hear very well because the music "got it in my ear," he says. People have to speak up when they talk to him now.

"I don't care about a lot of things like I used to. I used to love to play. I only go out and play now for the money," he explains.

"It got old to me. You think about playing music for 50 and 60 years. It'd get old to you."

He recently teamed up with John Sebastian to record some jug band music, and he plays every so often at the Slippery Noodle Inn and other spots around town.

Regrets having to quit school

Although Rachell has been a successful musician, he has some regrets. He wishes he would have had the opportunity to receive the kind of education that so many young kids today are passing up.

During our interview in his living room, he kept telling us how lucky we are because we can get our education.

Rachell quit school in sixth grade. It wasn't his idea. "My dad wouldn't let me stay in school anymore. He would say, `Come on, fix the fence to keep them cows in, and cut wood for the stove; we got to have dry wood.'

"When I come up, we had three months' school. The girls went some, but the boys didn't have a chance to go. The boys had to work all the time."

That helps explain his fascination with all the technology that has been developing over the years. By freeing kids from chores, it promotes education, which is the key to reaching your dreams.

Because Rachell was poor, he had to work for everything, and because he is black, everything he worked for never came easily. He came from a time when no one was equal.

Education taught us the world was round. Education also showed us that everyone is equal.

The legendary blues player of Indianapolis is getting old. People respect him now more than ever. Even though he doesn't play much, the respect for him and his kind of blues is keeping his music young and alive.

He has some advice for the young:

"I'm telling you, you must enjoy your life and try to take care of yourself. Go to school - that's the main part. That means so much to you."

EDITED BY: Justin Rouse, 15.