This land is mighty changed.  A run-out banjer player like me just don’t fit in right today. Ya see, modern society and me don’t see eye to eye.  Something familiar to me up and walked off sometime while I had the wool cap down over the eyes, a-snoozin’ beneath a tree.  I use ta be able to make those kids gettup, sing, maybe even beat that dance floor with some shoe leather.  And I met me some right purty-looking women.  We’d talk ‘till the wee hours and drink ten-cent brew.  I even woke up naked with a few of ‘em.

This country was a real rodeo for a young feller with a wild streak and a 5-string.  I been through forty six states by my roarin’ twenties, and seen a whole heckuva lot of this world from a boxcar and a truckbed.  Darned sea to shining sea.  I sweated piss in the desert and near froze my can off in the high country.  We’d a set down and pick whenever and wherever we could.  Dives, juke joints, honky-tonks, eateries, quite a few street corners too.  I played for gamblers, working men, crooks, scammers, soldiers, hobos, whores, and anybody with at least one working ear.  I’d toss the cap down in front, and on a good day hear the jingle-jangle of silver when next I picked it up.  Not jest a tradesmen but also a fan, I heard an un-numberable number of music makers in my day.  That’s what I liked most.  Back East they’d play the fiddle and banjer together.  Old songs that crossed the ocean blue just like they did themsulves.  Numbers so quick and spit-fiery that it just flat-out felt uncomfortable to keep ‘yer legs still while they played.  Down Southward I’d hear Negroes finger-plucking the geetar and moanin’ the lonesome ways of the world.  It was ‘jest opposite with these, a man couldn’t do nothin’ but flop down.  Hit ya like a boxcar runnin’ full-throttle through the earhole.

In Louisiane they sung a nasal patois and pumped the squeezebox.  In open country the cattlemen would yodel for music-lovers and livestock alike.  Fact of the matter, a keen ear could tell ya just about what county you sat in by the way the folks sang or played their music.  A.P. of the Carter family down in Virginia got most of his numbers jest by walkin’ the mountains around his home, keeping his ears open.  Collected ‘em like postal stamps.

Sometimes it was only one hill separating two styles of music.  But it ain’t so no more.  And this is what I’m trying to wrap my gray-haired noggin’ a-round.  Ever since Mr. Edison scratched lines on that wax, he started somethin’ that we ain’t seen the end of yet.  Last time I rode the Greyhound to California, I heard the same feller singing at the beginning and end of the trip.  And he weren’t sitting on that bus with me.  Sure ‘nough, he was coming out of some speaker, broadcast by radio waves, flyin’ through the ether, whatever that might be.  It sure was nice to hear singin’ on the ride, won’t argue with ya on that — but somethin’ ‘bout it makes me fear for the future, ‘specially for music-players like me.  When I was a greenhorned lad, was only but two ways to hear music.  Learn to play it…or hang about some folks who already can.  We didn’t have no phonograph.

Nowadays, twist a dial, or ride on down to the record store, and ya can hear the latest pretty-faced star.  In my day no one made a livin’ just by singin’.  Even those of us who came close still had to callous up our hands with somethin’ more than a steel string.  To a youngster today, music ain’t nothing but a commodity, shipped hot from Nashville or Tin Pan Alley, just like them oranges is from Florida.  It might as well fall outta the big blue sky.

I cain’t explain how ‘nor when, but a song loses just a little something this way.  And this old hoss has been chasin’ that little somethin’ all ‘cross this land with a banjer on his back.  Keep me far from the day when the only music around is comin’ from speakers.

But don’t take an ol’ two-bit rambler’s word for it.  Git yourself an instrument, however many strangs it might have.  Pluck it, bow it, strum it, slap it, thump it, whack it, or jest frail it with ‘yer clawhammer.  Ya don’t gotta be Jimmie Rodgers, folks.  By no means.  Eeelectricity be durned.  Those sounds will have something that jest don’t pass through a Victrola.  You gotta hear it ta believe it.