BLACK WATER
Every Thursday night during high school, a group of my friends and I would gather at the local Shakey’s Pizza on Gloria Drive in south Sacramento, just a few blocks from our campus. We would end up at the pizza joint after we attended the weekly meeting of Young Life, a rowdy song-and-game-filled gathering of suburban kids, hosted by a minister who soft-pedaled basic Christianity, in the living room of a willing parent’s house. We’d sing folk rock versions of old hymns, as well as new songs from musicals like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar during the meeting, but once we reached the pizza parlor, the juke box reigned supreme.
The one song we played first every week was “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers. It opened quietly, with a jangling noise that sounded like wind chimes made of shards of broken glass. As soon as I heard that jangling, my pulse would quicken, anticipating the swampy chords and swirling rhythms to come. We’d all sing along in low voices on the verses, but when the chorus came up, our group of at least a dozen tuneless teenagers would loudly belt out, “Old black water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shinin’ on me...” By the end of the song, which repeats over and over, “I’d like to hear some funky Dixieland, pretty mama come and take me by the hand,” some of the other customers would usually be shouting the words along with us.
The pizza parlor staff and other Thursday night regulars were used to our invasion of their space and the inevitable sing-along that was guaranteed by our presence. Looking back on it, I think they probably welcomed the influx of clean-cut, paying high-school-aged customers who were inside, singing and playing Pong and Space Invaders instead of outside, drinking beer in the parking lot, vandalizing cars and the building, or worse. We were good kids.
I’m not sure what it was about that song, “Black Water,” that so appealed to us. Maybe, for a bunch of white kids raised in suburban Sacramento, the setting of the song on the Mississippi delta seemed exotic and intriguing. Maybe it was the sawing fiddles, the interplay of instruments or the repetitive groove that mesmerized us. Whatever it was, it pulled us in and got us singing along, week after week.
Music really does provide the soundtrack of our lives. Every time I hear “Black Water” now, it takes me back to those innocent times when I flirted (ineptly... over root beers) with cute boys while they ate greasy pepperoni pizza... and occasionally flirted back.
