Close to Me is such a good love song I wanted to run this before Valentine’s Day. How close did Sonny Boy want to get? Like white on rice, like spots on dice, like water to wet, cold is to ice, fire is to smoke, like Chinese (now conjoined) twins, and (ugh) hair on sheep. My father was never so eloquent as when he described hating sheep shearing. Moon Dance is the best song to play on a first date, but if you should ever find someone who warms up to ‘white on rice,’ never let them go.
The album also has Decoration Day, which Wikipedia stiffly says is the former name for Memorial Day. My grandfather was born around 1900, and that’s what he always called it as we drove to the cemetery to put irises on loved ones’ graves. More history shows up in Trying to Get Back on My Feet. The lyrics are If I ever get my hand on a dollar again, I’ma hold it, hold it, hold it till the eagle grin. The date for the writing of that song is 1963, but Peace dollars were in wide circulation in the 1920s and ‘30s; that’s when people were familiar the large bald eagle on the back of the coin. Plus, the idea that a dollar was very hard to get hold of would have been from the Great Depression in the 1930s.
converselyspeaking 