Loan Me A Shadow "Somebody loan me a dime/So I can call my old-time/Used-to-be."   Boz Scaggs sings Lowell Fulson's "Loan Me A Dime," while rising and falling in the  bosom of blues orchestration, which is well-fed as a family funeral guest. This is from the late 60s, more or less the same era as what I (with little exposure) regarded as the fat times of his fulsome Marin County homegrown elevator easy listening hippie make-out music (as I may have described it in terminal zine prose). But as this song begins,  his almost halting eloquence always accosts me, has me floating on the sidewalk several minutes later, when Duane Allman shows up, and the whole platoon moves from the pathos of the blues into its boldness, with no disturbance of the winter vibe. Somebody loans Scaggs a dime, he knows now he can fix things up with his baby, or maybe he buys a cup of coffee (then also a dime, in some quarters). Anyway, he's energized, but not overstating his case, at least not before the phone call, or whatever the next pitch might be. No big resolution of the story arc, but he's resolved, and going somewhere. Young John Lee Hooker can do that alone-together thing with his guitar, and his foot, as the rest of the '50s go off to a party: young old dude lying in the alley, muttering and gathering his strength, until he's ready to stalk some shadows .And there's no overcrowding in JLH's '72 version of "T.B. Sheets," here credited to Hooker as well as Van Morrison  It's on Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive, a roomy house party (with a couple of mornings way after mornings after). Guests include Morrison, Elvin Bishop, and in this case, Michael White's electric violin, wings over the bed, in the ceiling. All in Hooker's head, his ears, his chest, his room. Population one, and the sign's still up.      don allred  ¶ 2/19/2012