averyfineline

Courtesy of regular reader DA, who found this passage from a short story in the most recent issue of Esquire - “The Night Johnny Ace Died” by James Lee Burke - and thought of me:

“You know the secret to being a rockabilly or country music celebrity? It’s not just the sequins on your clothes and the needle-nose, mirror-shined boots. Your music has to be full of sorrow, I mean just like the blood-flecked broken body of Jesus on the cross. When people go to the Assembly of God church and look up at that cross, the pain they see isn’t in Jesus’ body; it’s in their own lives.”