Q -- that is a gem. You deserve all our thanks for turning it up and posting it.

Nothing could do more to illustrate how different the concept of time was for both singer and hearers before our media world. Instead of muzak, here's a singer creating "entertainment" (if you will) or merely a musical accompaniment to the clack of the balls on the table, for maybe as long as half an hour at a stretch. That's a case of the blues singer as central to the day's experience, as indispensable as a bottle of beer or a cigar.

It's reminiscent of the Slavic cafe balladeers who could improvise endlessly for hours on mythic themes, still singing in the 1930s.

Wow, I'm in awe. This is a piece of the world we try so hard to rediscover when we explore the roots of where our music came from. A world in which the role and presence of home-made music was utterly different. Where a song could last an afternoon.

Bob