I never really learned either of these songs, but they’re both blues standards and I’ve been playing them together since the 1970s. It’s kind of a long story, but the short version is that I had a guitar stolen in Morocco in the winter of 1978-79 and needed to buy a new one, and Jasper Winn was in Sevilla, Spain, and willing to help out, and it was Carnival week, when there were lots of people in the bars all the time, and I had some harmonicas, so Jasper played rhythm guitar and I played harmonica and sang, and by the end of the week I’d made enough money that I could buy a guitar.

To be absolutely frank and come clean after all these years, we switched a price tag so I could buy a somewhat better guitar than I could afford, but in my defense it was at the Corte Ingles, a huge department store, not at a regular music store.

Anyway… I hated having the guitar stolen — it was a 1950s Gibson B-25, the first really nice guitar I ever owned (in those days worth maybe $250) — but that week taught me how to make money as a busker. Before that, I’d been doing street pitches and making almost nothing; after that, I worked bars, cafes, and restaurants and lived very well for the next few years while traveling all over Europe and on to the Indian Subcontinent, Central America, and much of Africa.

I generally played guitar, but if I wanted to work the noisy bars I’d find someone who could play a basic 12-bar blues and play harmonica, which was louder and left me free to jump around and work the room. I’d typically do a slow blues (generally “Call It Stormy Monday,” a choice I actually feel guiltier about than switching the price tags, since it is so, so, so overdone…), then “Johnny B. Goode,” which always got a good reception, and then, if it looked like they wanted another, this medley.

I always liked Jimmy Reed’s recordings, because he sounded so relaxed, and I loved his weird harmonica playing. I never tried to play like him — honestly, I never worked on playing harmonica like anybody, except briefly on some Robert Lee McCoy licks, which I no longer remember, and I really should buckle down and study…

…like at least learn some basic tongue-blocking…

…but meanwhile, I’ve been playing this a lot recently, and it’s fun.