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Blind Guy's Guitar

from Journeys Through Obscurity by Vernon Tonges

/

lyrics

Blind Guy’s Guitar
Union Missouri Blind Willie Johnson heard Willie McTell singin’ high.
Johns cut the air with his bullfrog rumble, called Jesus down from the sky
Willie McTell banged on his 12 string
Johns cut loose with his slide
Jesus kinda hummed along half to himself mostly listenin’ off to one side.
Light the fuse. Aim at the star.
Ride clear up to glory on a blind man’s guitar.
Blind man’s guitar
As you’re lifted aloft consider the cost ‘cause sorrow’s a fuel that would burn, boys.
Blind man’s guitar

Gary Davis met Blind Boy Fuller one sanctified Durham dawn
‘I’m catchin’ a train up to New York City, .
Mind your soul boy while I’m gone.’
Birds & crickets sing in the thickets & the briars & the nettles & the thorns,
But a man comes howling and screaming and raving in this world from the minute he's born.
His cries wring the rain from the low-lying clouds.
He shouts down the rooster & the wind boys.
Blind man’s guitar
His loud lamentations echo out through creation
Drive the devil from the bottle of gin, boys
Blind man’s guitar

Catchin’ a ride on a muddy dirt road? Boy, that ain’t gonna get you very far.
Try strapping a rocket with a turbine engine on the back of a Blind Man’s Guitar.

Hollow sounds like a voice in a cave. Those blind street singers singing in their graves.
I could listen all night. but I have to suggest you blind street singers take your hard-earned rest.
Blind man's guitar

credits

from Journeys Through Obscurity, released December 11, 2020
Music & Lyrics - Vernon Tonges (BMI)
Publisher - RockinK Music International (BMI)

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Rich Krueger Chicago, Illinois

A literary songwriter of the first rank. It’s his quavering, compassionate, observant, imaginative, sometimes overstuffed, always eloquent songwriting that his crack bands are there to put across, as they do, unfailingly.... the kind of miracle that keeps me checking out thousands of albums a year so I can grade a couple hundred for posterity.
- Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics ... more

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