by Larry Fyffe
The narrator in the following song lyrics just can’t comprehend why his fiery lust for a gal is not returned in kind:
When you are near It's just as plain as it can be I'm wild about you, gal You ought to be a fool about me (Bob Dylan: Spirit On The Water)
Likewise, so the situation is in the song lyrics below:
But Lord knows I'm a-wild about you, black gal I'm just as crazy as I can be Lord, Lord, I'm wild about you, black gal You ought to be a fool about me (Sonny Boy Williamson: Black Gal Blues)
In the next song lyrics, the narrator heads out after a relationship’s gone bad:
Might take a train, I might take a plane But if I have to walk I'll be going to Chicago just the same I'm going to Chicago on the Western Road (Bob Dylan: Western Road)
In the following song lyrics, the narrator can’t wait to be off to a place where he’s sure there are lots of opportunities to meet “crazy little women”:
Well, I might take a train, I might take a plane But if I have to walk I'm going just the same Going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come (Wilbert Harrison: Kansas City ~ Stoller/Leiber)
In the recording below the music begins at about 1′ 10″
In the lyrics beneath, cold floodwaters are a-rising where ‘hot wet’ women ought to be a-waiting the singer:
Big Joe Turner looking East and West From the dark room of his mind He made it to Kansas City Twelfth Street and Vine Nothing standing there (Bob Dylan: High Water)
The bluesman’s songs include lines such as:
I'm like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store
(Big Joe Turner: Shake, Rattle, And Roll ~ Calhoun)
Musta justa been a bit of bad luck. There’s gotta be a better place to meet easier woman than the place the narrator below is at now:
Gonna be standing on the corner Twelfth Street and Vine With my Kansas City baby And a bottle of Kansas City wine (Wilbert Harrison: Kansas City ~ Stoller/Lieber)
A philosophical explanation is needed to explain the present sorrowful state of male/female relationships.
In the following song, the watery female, the “spirit on the water”, corresponds to the fiery male “standing on the corner” of the concrete sidewalk in Kansas City:
She messes up big time, hovers above the waves; fails to bring the balancing spirit of her male companion down with her from the mysterious rings of Swedenborg’s heavenly planes.
As a consequence of her emotionally wrought behaviour, land-bound humans lose the chance to bind back together in the divine bridal chamber of the sea.
Nevermore will that be.
A spectre similar to that of Edgar Allan Poe’s lost Lenore appears:
Spirit on the water Darkness on the face of the deep I keep thinking about you baby I can hardly sleep (Bob Dylan: Spirit On The Water)
And another:
Bertha Mason shook it, broke it Then she hung it on a wall Says, "You'll dance with whom they tell you to Or you don't dance at all" It's tough out there (Bob Dylan: High Water)
Bertha’s a locked-up, mad woman from Charlotte Bronte’s novel “Jane Eyre”.
The Joker has the last laugh:
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call 'Cause my uncle took the message, and he wrote it on the wall (Chuck Berry: Memphis, Tennessee)
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