Mixtape

Audio / Video files of songs mentioned in this story

A cold drizzle fell as I wound around into the slopes of the Cumberland Mountains. Clouds like smudged charcoal turned the afternoon to dusk, and the only relief from the gloom came from a fiddler on the radio who ripped out “Turkey Bone Buzzer.”

“You like good music?” I said I did. He cranked up an old Edison phonograph, the kind with the big morning-glory blossom for a speaker, and put on a wax cylinder. 

“This will be ‘My Mother’s Prayer ,’” he said.

While I ate buttermilk pie, Watts served as disc jockey of Nameless, Tennessee. “Here’s ‘Mountain Rose.’” It was one of those moments that you know at the time will stay with you to the grave: the sweet pie, the gaunt man playing the old music, the coals in the stove glowing orange, the scent of kerosene and hot bread.

“Here’s ‘Evening Rhapsody.’” The music was so heavily romantic we both laughed. 

I thought: It is for this I have come.

Had Stephen Foster not changed his mind, the Pee Dee River would be much better known today than it is. The first version of his famous song about Southern homesickness began. “Way down upon the Pee Dee River, far, far away.” In a morning of wrong moves, I crossed the Pee Dee and almost missed seeing it.

“If you’re lookin’ for French music, you need to get yourself to laugh yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means haul your butt to laugh yet. Biggest Coonass city in the world.”
“Lafayette?” I made it three syllables.
“You got it, Junior, but we don’t say Lah–fay–et.”

. . . when I was a girl on the schoolyard, when they open the day with raisin’ Old Glory, we sing the Marseillaise — we thought it was America’s song.”

“Medicine’s a pretty good survival technique.”
“Sure, but I also like Jethro Tull in the Moody Blues. That’s not survival.”

The Moody Blues

Johnny and Vern took the bar dice and rolled horses to see who would plug the jukebox. Johnny won. “ don’t play the dirty one, or my wife’ll get wind of it again.” Vern made the selections and went to the toilet. The music came on. Country and western. Thump, thump, thump. “Dang him!” Johnny said. “He played that dang song. Now he’ll tell the wife I paid for it.” Johnny yelled toward the back. “Dang it, Vern!” A cackle from the jakes. Johnny didn’t talk during the music. I think he was listening. As best I could make out, this was the dirty part: “ I got the hoss, she’s got the saddle” . . . dum-dum-dum . . . “ together we gonna ride, ride, ride” . . . dum-dum-dum . . . all night long.”

“In bonanza days, after the Civil War, a grocer made a bet with a fella on an election. Whoever lost had to carry a fifty-pound bag of wheat flour up Main Street. 

Now just walking that street taxes a man. Grocer lost. 

So he carried fifty-pounds up Main to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body.’