So there's this old blues tune called Preachin' Blues. Atlanta band Delta Moon recorded an awesome take of it. (Check them out.) I guess this is one of those tunes where the lyrics are a bit open to interpretation, because you can find many variations if you look around. Anyway, I am dangerously obsessed with the lyrics that Delta Moon uses in their version. Let me set the scene;
In a church. The Deacon jumps up and says something unclear but apparently foolish. Then a "sister" jumps up and says
"Lord I'll be happy when that old boys' liquor runs out!"
Oh man, it don't get no more profound than that. Talk about painting a picture!
Now I don't know where they came up with those words, and I have no idea what they (or Son House for that matter) intend for us to see in this song, but here's what I see.
The Deacon (!) is drinking in church. The 'sister" knows it, and probably everybody else does too, because she just shouts it out. But she, and they, don't do anything about it, she's just looking forward to his liquor running out. Which leads one to believe that when it does run out, there won't be anymore for a while. Which fills in a lot of the image for us.
From here, we can choose among several different directions, whether it is poor urban, poor country, moonshine, unemployed, sharecropper, traveling musician. Personally, the image that comes to me is delta sharecropers. A plain white church out in the middle of nowhere (and I've been there!), hot, humid, the women with straw fans, and the men wearing whatever they have that passes for a suit. The women praying to the Lord that He will finally show their men the Light and the Way, and the men aching to get out of there and start playing cards and drinking. Nobody has cars. Everybody walks to church, and it's a long way.
But as it hapens, there is a roadhouse on the way back home. Of course.
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