I'm here for the same reason you are. I was married to the same woman for 27 years, and not once did she ask me what I do for a living. I know she's a chippy..I found matchbooks in her purse from every other bar in town, her mother's a transvestite, her father's a fuller brush man, but he's bald as a doorknob...I was afraid to drive..I knocked up this fifteen hundred pound mexican woman who didn't have a green card, wound up working at the Amerol city chamber of commerce, well, minimum wage and sh##, finally I told them you can take this job, for cryin' out loud, jumped in a taxi and told him top take me to east St. Louis; I'll pay whatever's on the meter. That's when I hooked up with this pharmacist, yeah, this crazy pharmacist, let me sweep up in the apothecary for hot meals and neosynephrine while I studied motel management at night. I finally got ready for the exam, and Jimmy The Lock broke in one night and stole some Lucky Tiger, a half pint of Bay Rum, and some Field and stream magazines...and I got a cross town bus. I told the driver let me off at the nearest bar, and whaddaya know..a girl I hadn't seen in fifteen years recognized me after a shave and told me she thought we could make beautiful music together. I said, baby, "I got a tin ear", and she said, "I got a glass eye and a bum leg", so we went up to her place where I found she was running guns to Africa and selling Avon products without a license, so I borrowed her car to go the the beach to meet new friends. Well, I got pulled over in Burmuda for driving without sunglasses, and harassed and intimidated until we started talking about Pete Kelly's Blues, and I said I know a guy named Web, and finally drove out of there with a new lease on life, a manual on how to avoid child molesting, and ten dollars in my pocket, which I spent on a 1956 recording of the Grand Prix at Sebring and an out of print Cozy Cole album that turned out to be a Rudy Ray Moore record. Well, I've been trying to get my hands on that for years, so I turned to myself and said, "Hey Earl, you gonna be a bum all your live? I said, "You talking to me?", well Earl used to be one of my aliases at the time...maybe you heard of me...Earl Shive, well, to make a long story short, I through in with these italian guys in Montebello. They talked me into opening a used food restaurant. Well, you got used clothes, used cars, why not used food...for less fortunate people who don't get out very often. Anyway, opening night, this one armed bass player goes beserk right in front of the place...you know searchlights, cops, they said it was a front for a prosthetic supermarket and a pet hospital, so they sentenced me to two years in prison, but they suspended the sentence and made me listen to a band called Mondray for six months. No parole.When I got out, I swore I was going straight. I got the first flight to Vegas to study to be a typing teacher...my analyst said it was the healthiest thing he ever heard of..In six months, I was living on chicken and wine...I'm not talkin' bull**** here...Every night I hit the after hours places with my beat up underwood typewriter, (you only heard about these places in Tally's corner, mind you) well, there I was with shades on hanging out at the bar...when this trombone player named Marcel Toupee asked me if I wanted to sit in..and well, he who hesitates is lost, so i got up on the bandstand, they hit me with a spotlight, kicked in a blues in B flat, and I just typed...typed like a crazy man. All that woodshedding, well you know...finally I got my own group, we played six nights a week and three shows on weekends, finally I couldn't pay the band, they left me flat..I was in Monty Wards trying to barter for some band uniforms, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of them since. So I got out of the racket. Went back to my first wife, told her there'd be no more of those bondage scenes, she slapped me with 1500 dollar bill, for some braces and s***. So I got me a job working at Yonker's racetrack. One day during the daily double, I remembered Hitler's phone number...666, I put all my money on 666, won twelve to one, paid 1268 bucks, drove all night to New Orleans to the girl of my dreams, woke her up, played her a long version of Harlem Nocturne on my trumpet, she called the paramedics, and they said "Hey buddy, take a long walk off a short peer". Well, I ain't no fool, I got me three hots and flop and the first thing smokin' outta town, if you know what I mean...and baby, I saw you in 1967. 1967, driving a Lincoln continental, smokin a Lucky Strike, going 75 miles an hour, on route 66, with a blue scarf around your neck, wearing Chanel #5, with Rosemary Clooney right there on the radio, and I know you didn't see me. But I saw you...and I said to myself, I gotta get next to that girl. So whaddya say you slide over a stool and let's get aquainted?
T.W. (a very rare rap from many many years ago)