The blues came to me from the radio, as I lay trapped at age
12 in a West Texas motel room at the Longhorn Courts, where I lived
with my gambler dad for $10/week, him getting the special rate because
he had been there for years. He was old (75), to be raising a
12-year-old boy, and selling used cars by day,
gambling all his money away occasionally,
didn't allow us much leeway for anyplace else. At least we always had
cars to drive, and later, when I was in high-school, I sometimes drove
a different car to school every morning. But when I was 12, I couldn't
do anything but read and listen to the radio, where I
first heard the blues, coming from Louisiana and Gatemouth, "The Mouth
of the South."
[More later]
Ronnie, drop me a line if you want your ramblings back here.
It's easy enough to do.)
Concerning the "place-in-space" business, this is a
virtual world, that says what it says, and exists in a
time-free dimension of feeling alongside the real, a real "parallel
world," not saying what
some old Texas place (gone to rust) would've said, but one that speaks
to your heart and mind, to a long-running train
of thought.
"Blacksnake Blues" (Victoria Spivey) "...mean ole blacksnake, suckin' my rider's tongue..."
"Black Mountain Blues" (Janis Joplin) I heard Janis Joplin sing this, at Threadgill's in Austin. I don't
think it's on any record she made, but I don't know.
