Casey Jones (Furry Lewis)

Описание: Furry Lewis’s “Casey Jones,” a longtime favorite, onstage in Ranica, Italy, filmed by Paolo Ercoli.

This has been a staple of my repertoire for several years now, thanks to Chris Strachwitz—and there’s a bit of a story there.

Chris was one of my heroes, and also became a friend, but he never had the slightest interest in my music. It was more than that, actually; he was utterly baffled that I or anyone like me would want to play the music we played.

Chris’s life revolved around music, back to his teens, hearing Lightnin’ Hopkins on the jukebox or the radio in Nevada, as a German immigrant kid, trying to figure out how or where he might fit into this strange world. He heard Lightnin’ singing “Hello Central,” and it moved him, spoke to him, and changed his life… he was hearing a man’s soul, a magical experience, and he spent the rest of his life chasing that feeling.

It never occurred to him to try to make that sound; that would have been crazy; it was the sound of Lightnin’s soul.

When he got to Berkeley and heard all sorts of young white kids trying to make that sound, he was, at best, puzzled. He liked a lot of those kids; some became close friends, lifelong friends. But it always baffled him that they would try to do this thing. They weren’t from that world; it wasn’t their experience; why would they want to pretend? He didn’t object, exactly, but he couldn’t understand how people who clearly loved the music as much as he loved it could want to produce pale imitations of it, rather than immersing themselves in the real thing.

Chris’s relationship to music was completely visceral; when we listened back to all the recordings he had made, in order to put together the Arhoolie 40th anniversary set, he remembered all the sessions and had stories about many of them, but his reactions to the music were unaffected by his memories; he loved some, but dismissed many of them. Lightnin’ Hopkins, for example; we included a couple of tracks of Lightnin’ on the box, and he had wonderful stories about their years together, but he thought the recordings he’d made were not as good as the Gold Star records, much less the experience of seeing Lightnin’ live in a rowdy Houston club, and the fact that he had made them was irrelevant. They weren’t the best, and he’d released the Gold Star records on Arhoolie and would have preferred to include one of those.

So, getting to me… he was startled that I could, for example, play a lot like Joseph Spence, but thought it was utterly bizarre that I would want to. He wasn’t negative about it, exactly; he was just puzzled. Any time he heard me play, he’d ask me why I wanted to do that.

Except, once at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, he heard me do an interview presentation about my Robert Johnson book, and in the course of it I played Lewis’s “Casey Jones,” and he liked the energy and swing of it. Like I say, his reactions were completely visceral; it made him move, and he was surprised that I could do that—not play the song, but reach him that way—and he was nice enough to tell me.

I was playing the song to make a historical point, and had not thought it was anything special, but I took note, because Chris was not just anybody. His tastes have shaped much of my life, and a lot of people’s lives, and changed the course of US music, and he was God’s honest man and…what more can I say?

I’ve learned that there are songs I like and songs that like me—sometimes they’re the same, but it’s not under my control. I like this one fine, but beyond that, it apparently likes me, and Chris tipped me off to that, and it’s been a staple of my repertoire ever since.