So Long, Ray

Cake

You know, suddenly, I have a hankering for a box cake. I wonder if I can impose on the Butcher to make me a box cake for Wednesday.

Sure I can!

One More Time

Whoa, so here’s a really extraordinary video of Furry Lewis doing “Going to Brownsville.” I really, really like Lewis. He’s got just a beautiful voice, so rich and lovely. It reminds me of a church voice–like you stand next to these ordinary men who don’t sing on any other occasion but church and you discover that they have these really lovely voices you wish they’d use all the time. Furry Lewis is a man with a church voice who somehow actually got to use it all the time. And his joke is hilarious. I know it’s kind of hard to make out, but he’s basically saying that he knows he’s going to play well tonight compared to the other night, because he didn’t play so well there because it was so dark. (How dark was it, Furry?) It was so dark that, when you lit a match, you had to light another one to see if the first one struck.

That’s hilarious. Anyway, I’m with the camera man. Just watch his fingers. Beautiful.

But I would be remiss to not add Janis Joplin to the mix, if only because I feel pretty sure she also thought it was Brownsville, TX. This doesn’t quite work as a cover for me and I normally love Joplin and think she can do no wrong.

But it doesn’t quite settle in my ear because I keep wanting to sing this song to her music.

Ha ha ha. But it’s a nice reference–bring up Kitty’s feelings toward the boy from New York City to give us a feeling for how Joplin feels about her man. I think the real reason I don’t like it is that I love that the woman in Brownsville has great long curly hair. And no one in Joplin’s version has notable hair.