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woensdag 15 oktober 2014

San Francisco's Mabel Joy

Het geluid van regen en onweer komt vaak terug in zijn songs. Het typeerde deze zanger/schrijver, Mickey Newbury. Toen ik voor het eerst van hem hoorde, ergens in de jaren 70, werd dit nummer voor goed in mijn muzikaal geheugen gegrift. Een prachtig meesterwerk :
 
Lord, his daddy was an honest man, just a red dirt Georgia farmer.
His momma lived her short life, having kids and baling hay.
He had fifteen years and he ached inside to wander
He jumped a freight at Waycross and wound up in L.A.

Cold nights had no pity on that Waycross Georgia farm boy.
Most days he went hungry, then the summer came.
He met a girl known on the strip, San Francisco's Mabel Joy,
Destitution's child born in an L.A. street called Shame.

Growing up came quietly in the arms of Mabel Joy.
Laughter found their mornings it brought a meaning to his life.
Lord on the night before she left, sleep came and left that Waycross country boy.
With dreams of Georgia cotton and a California wife.

Sunday morning found him standin' neath the red light at her door.
A right cross sent him reeling, put him face down on the floor.
In place of his Mabel Joy he found a merchant mad marine,
He growled : "Your Georgia neck is red but Sonny, you're still green"

He turned twenty-one in a gray rock federal prison;
That old judge had no mercy for that Waycross Georgia boy.
Staring at those four gray walls in silence, Lord he just listened
To that midnight freight he knew could take him back to Mabel Joy.

Sunday morning found him lying 'neath the red light at her door.
With a bullet in his side, he cried : "Have you seen Mabel Joy?"
Stunned and shaken someone said : "Son, she don't live here no more.
No she left this house four years today, they say she's looking for......
some Georgia farm boy."