Right from the beginning, Hughes performs the words he has written and throws the audience off by refusing the rhyme we expect. The first two lines read, “Droning a drowsy syncopated tune/ Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon.” We can tell by the lack of inflection that the sentence isn’t complete, so we expect an upcoming word that rhymes with “tune” and “croon.” Since Hughes is seeking to describe a Black musician, he dangles the term “coon” in our faces and replaces it with a more dignified for the times humanistic word, “Negro.” The first portion of this performance immediately starts a conversation about blackness in Hughes’ time. From here Hughes displays the essence of the musician’s performance; there’s a great contrast between the way in which he describes the genre of music being played as opposed to the performer himself. When he says terms like, “O Blues!” and “Sweet Blues!” there’s a sort of nostalgia and quiet pride in his voice for this powerful Black creation. This contrasts the somber sound of his voice when he performs the words that the musician sings. He speaks in a deeper register that evokes the sadness that the Blues is all about.

When we arrive at the end of the work, we’re told that this tune is sung continuously, all night long. Though this line is relatively short we do receive the image of a person performing the Blues on a stoop and feeling completely alone; so alone that the moon and stars have left him. This sorrow is hammered in when we process that this man of Blues is subject to a dreamless sleep which is the abrupt ending to the poem. It is so unexpected mainly because of Hughes’ reading. The emphasis used at the end of the work almost feels like the introduction of the problem in a sonnet. Because this is the end, we are left knowing that this man meets sleep and possibly the ultimate sleep in sadness.