A LA RECHERCHE DE BLUES PERDUES, CHAPTER VII

WELL, how I learned to play.... Well, back where I came from we had no instruments, no music, no notes. My daddy had half a C clef that he picked up from a circus carny, but he knew no more what to do with it than a nun in a pickle factory. Anyway, we were out lynching horse thieves one day, and it happened that we were lynching someone real heavy and someone real light, and I got the idea of plucking the ropes, and when I found that they gave off different sounds, apart from the moaning and groaning of course, then I was off. We had lots of horse thieves in those days, and because my daddy worked for the county, we were able after that to arrange them in sequence. They'd string 'em up pentatonic, and I'd pluck away, and the neighbours would dance. Hard times, but good times too.

One day a travelling salesman for Victrola came along the ridge, and sold my daddy a pile of records that he used as collars for his collection of rattlesnakes. He'd just stick their necks through the hole, and they'd be stuck, hissin and carryin on, but causing no harm. Now, every once't in a while one of them rattlers would work its way part of loose, and start chewing with its teeth along the edge of the record. And that's how I first heard Bessie Smith. Soon I got so as I could pivot those rattlers, and give the records a spin around, and with their mouths open as a natural resonator, you got fine sound, fine sound, as good as these CD's today. A whole world of music opened up to me -- Caruso, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmie Rodgers.

But I was telling you about how I learned to play...