The relationship between blues and gospel can be seen as two sides of the same coin; both blues are for despair, and gospel is for hope, relating to the same subject. The blues-gospel rap is a map for the psychologically unified view of the world. Using this dichotomy of hope-despair, the positions are either the blues are the illegitimate child of the spiritual, or that spiritual understanding is a marriage of hope and despair.
Old Man Breen, a blind black guitarist, gave the author and his friends, Mike and Ricky, a new hangout: Breen’s Alley. In their meeting, the guitarist also instilled into Charles Seagraves and his childhood friends a value for blues music.