Extracts of a novel by M Glenn Taylor.

He let his fingers hover over the chipped keyboard, eyes shut tight. He lit another cigarette. Willie dropped in a slow but catchy bass line. Johnnie came in second, smooth and easy, Chicky waited, then let rip a reed splitter. They had it down. Johnnie kept his eyes shut as he started to sing.

Well, I drown a glass a water

and I’ll hang a rope

The devil he done come to me

Took away my hope

Well, I’ll put that stick a dynamite

Right on under your nose

Cause I done seen the worst a man can see

That’s just how it goes

The voice, the whole sound, was smoke-shot vocal chords and sticky-floor toe-tapping, holes in the soles. Chickey played part of the song with his nose. It was holy hell blues all right, and the only country or gospel to be heard was not a brand greasy Jimmy the disc jockey had ever encountered. This was sin music.

The muffled fiddle squal, the quiet dulcimer, the old five string, they were just discernable enough to calm the excitement. And when the young woman’s voice broke through, it was beautiful. Church solo beautiful. They could make out her words.

Well, boys, you’ve heard that tale

About a Mingo dead-eye shot

Who on that 1920 day couldn’t fail

To give Al Felts what he got

The boy was full of rotten teeth

But his eye was keen and sure

He held the miners’ deep belief

That their lives were surely pure

Out on the hallway stairwell, Chickey’s sight went red. Everything blurred. The howling in his ears commenced and his knees gave. He dropped like a man in the mids of a stroke.

Johnnie and Willie kneeled to him, slapped his face a little. They listened for his breath, found it, and carried him out, just as greasy Jimmy said to the radio-listening public, ‘And that was The Mingo Four with “The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart.”