An Elk River Boy made good

An evening with Watermelon Slim, bluesman

Marietta, Ohio, March, 2008 I hadn't seen him in a couple years, but was surprised and honored he recognized me immediately. I got to hang out with him some before and quite a while after the show at the River City Blues Festival in Marietta. I'd rather sit down and talk to him than just about any human being on earth, because not only is he a wonderful guy and a great bluesman, he's a very deep, educated individual. We sat around talking, in our Appalachian drawls (his is NC, mine WV) about harps, fishing, baseball, moonshine whiskey, God, history, Hemingway and Shakespeare.

We were talking about Shakespeare's "King Henry V" and he says out of the blue: "Would you like to hear a sonnet I wrote on the occasion of the death of the Queen Mother?" He recited his sonnet from memory, it traced the Queen Mother's life from the days she and England stood alone against Hitler to her death and England's mourning, etc. It reminded me of that sonnet Shakespeare wrote about Queen Elizabeth's death (my googling says it was Sonnet CVII). He finished his sonnet, looked off to the side and said "I specialize in iambic pentameter." I will remember Watermelon saying that, in a voice that sounded half Sir Lawrence Olivier and half Gabby Hayes, until the day I die

Here is Watermelon's Sonnet:

One of the last who would remember well

Both of her England's twentieth-century wars,

This queen, this mother, stood against the swell

Of German pride and Nazism's mad force. This was a royal of an older day

When dignity and noblesse stood for ought,

And though the Law had circumscribed her sway

For King and Queen and Country Britons fought.

It must have been a pleasure to have known,

Have lived, and laughed, and kept solemn with, her.

A glorious part of history now is gone,

A steady guidepost to the best we were.

Oh England, for now, cry your decorous tears.

But know the throne shall flourish through the years

Here is a short video of Watermelon in Marietta: