The River Answer Moons Band does great in carrying and accenting this story of “my first Driller in the Oil-Field.” DON VAPPIE is the music’s main architect and ROGER LEWIS, KIRK JOSEPH, and HERMAN LEBEAUX play in this performance.
Engineers DANNY KADAR and TRAVIS WAGUESTACK send along the multi-track recording of Don Paul and Rivers Answer Moons in the Mint Theater last week, Sept. 3, and I did a Mix from 12 Tracks and then a DPFTC from the 2-Track Mix-Down.
YOU CAN WATCH our DPRAM show on the NOJM’s website. Folks actually audible start around 6:30 and our ‘Jack Groves’ starts at 44:20.
'Jack Groves' Jack Groves, my first Driller, From Lake Charles, Louisiana, Started in the oil-field Depression times, when hands slept out On the ground by their rig or pipeline. A lot of folks around Lake Charles played guitar. Jack met his wife while walking after supper. "She was just a girl, 15 years old, on a porch there." Her voice lilted through the honeysuckled air. Jack Groves asked her: "Would you like To go to the movies with me?" They were married the next year. A young Paratrooper in the Second World War, Jack afterward got to where He knew something on the Floor, Made Driller, and worked offshore Of Johannesburg, Iran and Singapore. Strong like a bull, His neck like Siva’s or Hu’s, Jack talked about his best friend Back on the pipeline, a Cherokee. "That old boy would get drunk and want To fight a circular-saw." Jack made roughnecks who sassed him Repeat jobs. “You just have to remember I'm older, uglier 'nd meaner than any of you. Each night in our Houston motel-room Jack talked on the phone with his wife They talked about what Jack had Done on the job that day, Her Winter , TV stars, And about what time Jack would get Back to Broussard, Louisiana When this hitch was over. Offshore, in the Galley Of platform-rigs or tender-ships, Drillers and Toolpushers “Drink coffee and tell lies." One day the subject got onto, Jack said to me: "Would you let your son marry a Black-- They said another word for Black--woman? I told them I'd married the wife I wanted, So I guessed my son could marry The wife that he wanted." After that, Jack said: "Men I thought were my friends Acted like I was Black, too." Jack Groves liked Wayne Newton, Jimmie Rodgers and his Blue Yodel, And Bukka White. That old boy who was in Prison For quite a while. "Bukka White, he Could play and sing him some Blues You believed!" 1990
