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3<br />
A lettor to<br />
the editor...<br />
Dear Sir,<br />
I am not the kind of man who likes to make a<br />
stink. But I was just down at Shelly’s Porkpie Shack<br />
in Shreveport, Louisiana talking with a few folks<br />
having a high-time when I looked up and saw<br />
in one of those spindly racks behind the<br />
counter your magazine with The 100<br />
Greatest Artists of All Time. I recognized<br />
some of those faces on<br />
the cover except a bleach haired<br />
kid that looked like Jesus on reefer<br />
and like I said I don’t like to make<br />
a stink but I didn’t see any mention<br />
of Rabbit Foot Baker not even in<br />
the tail end with that Black Sabbath<br />
fellow biting the head off that poor<br />
bird. Real music is made in backyards<br />
and barrelhouses that smell of piss and<br />
blood.<br />
That’s slow, man, real slow. That’s the creeping up<br />
of real music on you and I understand you don’t<br />
get that where you’re reading this (my great grandson<br />
Dennis Jr. is typing on the computer for me because<br />
my thumping hand has gone slack). I’m a<br />
hundred blood in me young. I cut my first guitar<br />
strings<br />
from wires on<br />
our porch screen. I went with the<br />
Rabbit Foot Minstrels from 1910 until the war.<br />
After the war I showed everyone in Chi-town - Big<br />
Bill, Tampa Red - excuse my language sir but it’s<br />
God’s honest truth - like when I met everybody’s<br />
favorite Robert Johnson he smelled like he had<br />
just done surgery and then fell face first into a gin<br />
bath. Scrapper Johnson - how to really dig in ‘til<br />
your hand don’t feel like yours no more and you’re<br />
bleeding on somebody’s brother’s guitar. You want<br />
to know who wrote that lick to “Lucille?” No it<br />
wasn’t me.<br />
The clown went to town and I saw him<br />
and I gave him a high five. I hope this<br />
design turns out cool. That was Dupie<br />
McClure, the had slanty eyes. I don’t<br />
see him in your magazine either. As<br />
I said before I don’t like to make a<br />
stink but you need to get your staff<br />
to do some more research like<br />
when those two white boys from<br />
the Smithsonian in Washington,<br />
DC came down to do some real<br />
recording, like a scientific thing. The<br />
slow creep of a knife on some old strings<br />
that’ll gut you just as clean, a sound that’ll<br />
make you cry for being happy. That’s the<br />
blues, man. My grandson Dennis Jr. says<br />
you also publish your magazine on the internet<br />
God<br />
which he says<br />
Bless.<br />
more see these days.<br />
5SOS TESTED,<br />
5SOS<br />
APPROVED