Boogie Down (Me): C-A Boogie (#14)

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It’s an odd-numbered day, so that means that it’s the oddball’s turn for a song with “boogie” in the title. Aren’t y’all so lucky? So here we go with a friend and a swinging little boogie tune. (Linda? You might tolerate this one until about the 2-minute mark when the steel guitar comes in.) #14: C-A Boogie - Deke Dickerson It’s the Dekester! Deke Dickerson, as his concert shirts and posters say, is “America’s roots music superhero.” Believe it. The guitar in the screen grab is a mock-up of the double-neck guitar that west coast guitarists like Joe Maphis and Larry Collins played. And I’ve seen him do the trick that Collins and Maphis used to do on Town Hall Party, where FOUR people would play (two picking, two fretting) one guitar. That takes a lot of talent, trust, and a traffic cop to get four people around one guitar! (Especially when one of them is Chris Scruggs. [You’d have to know Chris to appreciate that. Just smile and nod at the silly hillbilly and her joke to herself. ]) This is generally a true story: Dickerson grew up in Missouri and moved to California for his career. “Back home I shoveled ice and snow,” so he traded it for wildfires. (I can’t say he “traded” for the earthquakes, because he grew up on the New Madrid Fault. ) While he’s not well known for his music (which is a crying shame, the guy is a phenomenal guitarist), at least he has that encyclopedic knowledge of music to fall back on. He’s written a number of books, including a biography of Merle Travis and books on looking for long-lost guitars with musical history attached to them (called The Strat in the Attic). I took him on a quick trip around Cincinnati to show him some historic sites when he played there about ten years ago (and my back allowed me to go to concerts and stand for four hours). He’s a great guy, and a great musician. C-A Boogie Written by Deke Dickerson Recorded by Deke Dickerson From Rhythm, Rhyme, and Truth, 2000 The sun stays out so late: