Music Monday: Any Woman's Blues by Bessie Smith

This weekend at the beach, I started reading an old favorite from 1991, Any Woman's Blues: A Novel of Obsession by Erica Jong, which fits in nicely with last week's Billy Falcon "Power Windows" post on Roxy's Bay Head Blog. The first page takes me back in time:
"I listen for the sound of his motorcycle spraying pebbles on the curving driveway path. I imagine his body, his mocking mouth on mine, his curving cock, and I am a ruin of desire and the fight against desire. I don't know which is worse -- the desire or the anti-desire. Both undo me; both burn me and reduce me to ash."

Today, I smile because the heroine of the novel is 44 and I've now reached the age of 44, having long ago outgrown my obsession and moved on. Though the novel came out 20 years ago when I was in the midst of my own obsession, until today I had never listened to any of the compelling Bessie Smith music whose lyrics introduce most of the chapters, and from whom the novel draws its name. I'll apologize in advance that YouTube didn't really offer up a video, but you'll get the sound of it.



My man ain't acting right, he stays out late at night
And still he says he loves no one but me
But if I find that gal, that tries to steal my pal
I'll get her told, just you wait and see
I feel blue, I don't know what to do
Every woman in my fix
is bound to feel blue too, 'cause
I love my man better than I love myself
Lord, I love my man better than I love myself
And if he don't have me, he won't have nobody else
My man's got teeth like a lighthouse on the sea
My man's got teeth like a lighthouse on the sea
And ev'rytime he smiles he throws them lights on me
His voice sounds like chimes, I mean the organ kind
His voice sounds like chimes, I mean the organ kind
And ev'rytime he speaks his music ease my troubling mind

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