Here is a lonely old "spoken word" from many years ago, after immersing in Shep Shepherd Jr.'s great recordings and radio transcriptions.
At the time, I was enamored particularly of "Shifting, Whispering Sands." Both Part 1 and Part 2.
Sam Thomas had a bunch of Jean Shepherd records I had never seen. While we were needle dropping on his vinyl one night, I asked if he had anything Italian because I had to play an Italian wedding that weekend.
He didn't, but he had an old mandolin. He handed it to me and we spilled a few cans of Texas Pride beer doing the hand-off. I wondered how hard it might be to fake playing it.
He let me take it home to use on the gig that weekend.
Coincidentally, I'd been making cassette tapes of me playing with the great guitarist Dave Lincoln, and we had a draft of "autumn leaves" which I practiced to, hitting strings on the mandolin to get the typical sound as close as possible.
Overdubbing the mandolin onto that cassette basically ruined it for any practical further purposes. Who wants to hear someone fumbling with a mandolin.
But since I can't throw anything out, I decided two mistakes were better than one. I wrote some lyrics that I could picture Jean Shepherd Jr. reading over the mandolin and guitar track.
I'm writing this because the story behind the song is possibly more interesting than the song itself.
Sam Thomas was an inspiration who made tapes for me of tunes I should learn on sax and clarinet. A few days after the wedding I heard he was found dead in his apartment.
He and his son did not get along, his only living relative. I thought, I could keep the mandolin and Sam would not have minded. But he lent it to me, not gave it to me.
I went to his apartment with the mandolin and knocked. No answer. I pushed on the door and it was open. I didn't want to look inside, because even when Sam lived there, every surface was covered. His career involved delivering groceries to families on the North Side of Fort Worth. His recreation was going to hear live jazz and playing records; how we met up.
I put the mandolin inside the door.
I learned later that his son had sold all his records, and mandolin, etc. to Sumter Bruton at Record Town, the store we all hung out at.
Now as the weather turns colder I thought of the key line in the spoken word "Delirious Guy"-- "Somebody May Still Care."
Click on "Delirious Guy" at the top of this if you want to hear it.
