The Old Bluesman could have been Robert Johnson.But he

wasn’t. He could have been Son House or Leadbelly or John

Lee Hooker. He played a mean guitar and he said that he

had given Old Slowhand guitar lessons. But he wasn’t

Howlin’ Wolf either. He was just the Old Bluesman and that

suited me fine. He was born and raised in the Cotton

Fields Back Home in Louisiana. When he was a little biddy

baby his mama used to rock him in the cradle in them old

cotton fields back home. But all that hard labor in the

cotton fields broke his mama’s back and the Good Lord took

her back to the Great Cotton Fields in the Sky to work the

Fields of Gold what else, and his old man stuck a knife in

the beer gut of a redneck during a drunken brawl and spend

the rest of his life singing the Folsom Prison Blues in a

falsetto. When the Old Bluesman was sixteen he picked up a

Guitar and headed out way west looking for the Dream. One

day he hit a small town in Minnesota called Hibbing and

met a snotty young man named Robert Zimmerman who had

actually got the Dream going his way. But the Dream won

him over and took him all over the Yellow Brick Road till

he found fame and fortune. The Old Bluesman then had

headed down to Sunny California where everybody was trying

to be somebody else. By the time he got his Dream going a

bunch of Englishmen with long hair had descended on him

like a ton of bricks and stole the Dream away, which in a

way saved his life. I had met the Old Bluesman quite by

accident. One day sitting home all alone smoking a reefer

I heard the Voice. I stepped out and there was the Old

Bluesman by the door with a Guitar in hand. He was

strumming the Guitar and he was that sweet man Mississippi

John Hurt singing ..” You are a bad man. You mean old

Stagolee.” He wasn’t Mississippi John Hurt although at

that time I thought he was. The Old Bluesman was my

constant companion and he helped me through real hard

times. I told him about my Dream and he said that when it

gets so that you can’t live without the Dream to look him

up and he would help me find the Dream. “ The Dream is a

weird thing. In the US of A, everybody is looking for the

Dream. Sometimes the Dream can smother you with good

intentions. Sometimes the Dream can take you by the

forelock. Sometimes the Dream would hang around your neck

like an albatross and you wouldn’t even know it. Sometimes

the Dream may lie in wait like a rattlesnake ready to sink

its fangs into you. Sometimes the Dream would sing you a

lullaby and rock you to sleep. Sometimes the Dream would

be the death of you.” That’s what the Old Bluesman told me

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