I woke up this morning
feelin' around for my series
You could tell by that that I got
those old walkin' blues
Johnny Shines, from Memphis,
Tennessee,
met Robert Johnson in Helena,
Arkansas,
by way of a pianist called M &O,
who was named for a railroad,
the Mobile in Ohio,
running from St. Louis
down to the Delta
and on to Mobile.
Johnny Shine says Robert Johnson
was the greatest guitar player
I'd ever heard.
The things he was doing
was things that I'd never
heard nobody else to do.
He was kind of long -armed,
by which he meant
it was hard to get too close to Robert.
Robert was a guy
who could wake him up any time
when he was ready to go.
Say, for instance,
you had come from Memphis to Helena,
and we'd play there all night,
probably,
and lay down to sleep the next morning
and hear a train and say Robert
I hear a train let's catch it.
He wouldn't exchange
no words with you
he's just ready to go.
We go right back to Memphis
that's where the train's going
it didn't make him no difference
just so he was going.
We was stayin' in West Memphis
at a place called John Hurt's
and this place burnt down
and burnt our guitars up.
I didn't know that Robert knew anything
about harmonica at all.
But he came up with this
old harmonica.
We were out on Highway 61
and he started blowin' this harmonica
and slappin' his hands, pattin' his hands,
blowin' and singin'.
And in a few minutes,
the whole highway
was almost blocked off with cars.
People pitchin' us nickels,
dimes, quarters.
He'd sing, I would sing.
And when we got to Steeles, Missouri,
we bought ourselves little guitars.
We had enough money to
buy guitars with.
And truthfully speaking,
we didn't have no money
when we started out.
We'd be on the road for days and days,
no money
and sometimes not much food,
let alone a decent place to
spend the night,
playin' on dusty streets
or inside dirty places of the sort you
played in those times.
And as I catch my breath
and see myself looking like a dog,
there'd be Robert all clean as can be,
looking like he's just stepping out of church.
You