It was probably 1973 in the bedroom of our buddy Mark Crawford whose Dad was a Methodist preacher who let his son smoke pot in the house.
Mark played lead guitar during high school with various crappy garage bands. “Wild Bill” Beebe, aspiring one day future venture capitalist, was there too with me, the rose-colored-glasses-wearing-long-haired hippie editor of our sucky high school newspaper, and Nels Ingram, our high school football jock friend who we turned into a stoner like us.
Mark took a hit off the joint as it passed around our little Breakfast Club in definite need af some “chicks” and said, “Check out this chick!”
And we were all completely smitten instantly IN LOVE with the tomboy badass guitar playing SWEET BONNIE RAITT!
”GOOD ENOUGH, huh?” one of us said, it might have been me. “You better bet your ass SHE IS!”
Funky, funny, rock & roll Hot Mama, and Delta Blues Diva, we all LOVED BONNIE! She was every guy’s or gal’s best girlfriend.
Although I never saw her in concert, she was always there on the radio, in the background music of my life, regularly playing music with all my favorite musicians over the last 50 years. You name one, and Bonnie played with him or her and made everyone sound even better. B. B. King once called her the best slide guitarist of his generation.
Fast forward to yesterday, last night to be precise, me married now for forty two years with my beautiful bride sitting beside me, Bonnie on stage with her band that broke up her own late in life marriage to some misfortunate movie star whose name I don’t remember, and my old teenaged crush from so long ago sang to me and to me alone . . . as well as to millions of other one time or would be lovers and heartbroken souls in the concert hall and all around the world.
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