Bonnie

I don't know what possessed me to take the bass out of the case Saturday afternoon, but it was worth the sore fingers to mess around for an hour, playing along with an irresistible record. So first of all, let me credit my old friend Mark Ornery of Birmingham and Ann Arbor for "lending" me his Hofner in 1971, and Bonnie Raitt of Hollywood and Cambridge for inspiration, perspiration, respiration, communication, and plain everyday love.

It's one of her less famous records, "Green Light," from 1982, and it didn't get much attention at the time, but who can keep track of these things? The LP has been sitting in a box in the garage for a couple of years after sitting in a cabinet in the living room for several more years, and I'm not sure where it came from in the first place, probably the used bin at a record store on some annual holiday foray for new/old music when the kids were little. It's a transitional, pre-Grammy-winning Bonnie Raitt in full rock and roll mode, not the traditional blues revivalist of the seventies, when I first fell in love with her.

There, I've said it. It happened so suddenly, in the tastefully funky room of a friend of a friend named Al Gold. I wasn't there to listen to music, but he put on "Give it up," and I was hooked. I immediately bought that lavender album and for the next year or two became an evangelist for Bonnie and her musical mission of bringing the music of Sippie Wallace, Fred McDowell, and other legends to another generation of rock and rollers. I did a lot of traveling that year, and I took her records with me, pressing them on everybody I knew like the recent convert I was. I imagined myself in the role of her bassist, Freebo, whose Converse All-Stars and Fender neck graced one of the covers.

So I bought more of her records, and each one captivated me in a different way. "Give it Up" had a country flavor; (the next one) was all acoustic blues, kind of a homemade album recorded at somebody's camp in Minnesota with Junior Wells and a bunch of friends. "Taking my Time" was a much more polished studio work that a friend in the U.P. swapped me for (the next one) in 1974. Gven and I went to see Bonnie and her band of former Little Feat (minus Lowell George) at the Harvest Moon Saloon in Atlanta around 1985, and we saw her again with a different band at the Palace Theater in Columbus in 1987 with Richard Thompson opening.

Our kids grew up listening to Bonnie's slide guitar solos, her sexy feminism, and her activism against racism, war, and heartless conduct in all its forms. Once in a great while I get on a Bonnie Raitt jag. Unpacking a box of vinyl set me off last week, so now I listen to it over and over and can't get some of the songs out of my head. The second track, "I Can't Help Myself" is a straight-up rocker that sounds a little like the Stones on "Tumbling Dice" and sort of describes that phenomenon. Even more visceral is "Baby Come Back," originally recorded by the Equals in 1968 and played at top volume in my '66 Mustang driving up Telegraph Road on a summer day. It couldn't be much simpler, but it does what all good rock and roll does, it makes you wanna move. The first track on that side has a bit of The Who sound and is appropriately titled "Me and the Boys."

Now that my fingertips have had a day to heal, I can't wait to get back to the bass and play along again. I never did have the chops of a real musician, and my fingers, weak from lack of practice, can barely reach some of the frets, but you know what, who cares? It's too much fun not to.

Just a brief note on strong women who shake things up a bit.