Monday's boring soup. Very disappointing

Tonight I made Black Bean Soup from the NY Times Bread and Soup Cookbook, 1972. I added the date because my guess is that unless you had someone around you who was Latino in background, you’d never heard or eaten a black bean. I wanted to make a soup that used my ham bone from Easter and this did it, but it was boring. I have made black bean soup that took less time and was much more tasty.
2C black beans
8C cold water
3 medium-sized onions
3 stalks of celery
¼ C butter
2 bay leaves
2T parsley, chopped
1 ham bone
½ t salt
1/8 t ground black pepper
2/3 C dry sherry
Place the beans in a pot and cover with water and soak overnight. Drain the beans and return to the pot and simmer in 8 cups of water until soft. I started this process at 9:00 AM. Peel and chop the onions. Chop the celery and sauté them both in the butter until transparent. Add this to the soup with the bay leaves, parsley, ham bone, salt and pepper. I started this process at 2:30 PM. My beans were not quite soft so I set the timer for 4 hours instead of 3and cooked covered over medium heat. At the end, I removed the bone that was in many pieces and the 2 bay leaves. I used my immersion blender to blend until smooth. Then add the sherry. It said to warm again; mine was so hot, the little amount of sherry did not make a difference. We had some left over appetizers from all our entertaining and Jim cooked himself a sirloin burger.  Jim served a Old Vine Zin.