Baby, Please Don't Go by Big Joe Williams

One of my favourite sets of CDs features good old, gritty blues.  The sound is tremendously rough in places - like cheap whiskey and three-day stubble - these being early recordings of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Willie McTell and the like, and I love it.  Always makes me want to dance and open the bottle.  I gave a quick nod to this collection in The Grease Monkey's Tale (pp 94-95), albeit under a different name, and mentioned a track where Big Joe Williams plays (appropriately for Nic the mechanic at that point in his story) Baby, Please Don't Go.

Thought it was about time I found the man on YouTube, so here he is, playing this song on a 9 string guitar, of all things.

Willie Dixon - another blues great - is conveniently quoted under this video:

"The blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits."

Recent reads: The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono

I only recently came across the name Jean Giono, after his work was recommended to me by my friend, Dmetri Kakmi.  Following that discussion, I ordered a copy of The Man Who Planted Trees.

Coincidentally, Dmetri has blogged about this particular book today and you can read his comments here.  While I have a tale to tell about the arrival of this book, I won't add much more to what Dmetri's said about Giono's writing, except that the simplest tales are often the most profound and memorable.  It's a fine piece of writing, and puts me in mind of Alan Garner's Stone Book quartet and elements of Paul Gallico (The Snow Goose, for instance), all of which I read many years ago, except Giono pares the story-telling back even further perhaps.

Anyway, I found the book online at a couple of sites, but Fishpond were offering an edition with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy that took my eye, and so I ordered from them.  A very light, paperback-sized package arrived a few days later, which I opened to discover... a stamp-sized book.  It's a tiny thing.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating in saying it's a stamp-sized book, but it's certainly not much larger than an unfolded book of stamps.  And, including a 24 page Afterword by Norma L. Goodrich, it's only 77 pages long.  I read it in one small sitting.

Regardless of that, it's a delightful piece of writing (with wonderful woodcuts) and I'm keen to read more by Jean Giono.  The Song of the World may be next.

June sunrise

It's winter here.  The days are short, cold and often wet.  However, on fine days, June is a golden month for sunrises and sunsets - regardless of volcanic ash clouds drifting over from Chile.  Every year, it's impossible to resist capturing one or two on camera.

Took a whole sequence last Thursday, between 7:30 and 8:00 am, while taking a walk before work.  These two, about five minutes apart, show how quickly the show changes.  In the last moments, the reflected light in the wet sand glowed lilac.

From South Beach dunes looking towards East Beach, Port Fairy, 16th June, 2011

South Beach, Port Fairy, 16th June, 2011