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And now, today's episode of Someone Just Like You. Thanks for supporting the Fable and Folly Network. Chivalry. You can't really recall if he's a foot fucker or a toe sucker. I'll not return to my kingdom alone. They're already speculating. I'll end up with fun on. Gravery. I can try to save her, sir. Be patient. We're consulting. Hold on. Don't drown. And whatever this is. I'm a sexy gambit. Fuck my brain.
Why? Lots of it. There lived a squire who was too old to still be squiring. Perhaps I should be content with... Mediocre! Will he achieve his dream of becoming a knight? All I am asking for to serve my kingdom with adequacy. Or will a boy named There are odd... heroes in heaven. and cowards in hell become a legend in- He who pulls the sword from the stone shall be future king. Untitled, a scripted comedy po- Oh my god, it's not my... Listen to season one today.
Someone just like you is a horror scene. Check the show notes for episode specific content warnings Listener discretion is advised My fingers bend backward and beg me, please, let us write a story for them. Let us build their skin to reveal the horror lurking beneath. pain that feels all too familiar torment that hits too close to home This isn't an alternate dimension. This isn't a liminal realm or a divergent timeline. These horrors are here. And now, this could happen. Someone just like you.
It's pretty easy to judge a person by their taste in music. Some people you might call normies are happy with the basics in life. They listen to the top 40 and hum along to the radio if a song they know comes on. Play the same three albums on their commute to work in an endless cycle of reassuring familiarity. Then there are the hipsters. Think they know a thing or two about real music?
They read blogs and follow the latest trends online. They're desperate for validation, clinging on to what little cultural clout they think they have as they creep toward middle age. And you've got your younger trendsetters who believe they're the ones in the know that listen to bands you've never even heard of. And they're just as insecure as hipsters in their own way. And then...
There are people like me obsessives, the weirdos, the kind who'd elbow drop an aging hippie's dentures out just to snatch a rare Japanese import of blonde on blonde Loners who dig for rare 45s in out-of-town thrift stores. Paunchy, grey-skinned guys who unironically wear t-shirts that say, Vinyl is my religion. People with Way too much time on their hands.
That being said, I consider myself pretty discerning regarding my own particular obsession. I don't just dig for museum-worthy items that go for triple-digit figures at auction. I am a completist. I want every iteration of the same thing, from cheap foreign bootlegs to white label promos. Perhaps my collection isn't as varied or expensive as some, but you'd be hard pressed to find one that was so thorough. you Blues music is my favorite.
Not the showy Chicago electric shuffle stuff or those pale imitations attempted by the British invasion bands. I craved the real, down and dirty, salt of the earth blues. Sunhouse, Blind Lemon, Robert Johnson, all those southern prophets who graced us with their presence, who played like their lives depended on it. And in the case of Robert Johnson, perhaps it did.
The Alan Lomax tapes are my constant companion, the most significant contribution to our collective cultural experience there's ever been. Kind of funny, seeing as I grew up in Vermont, as far north of the southern delta as you can get, but sometimes music speaks to us on a different wavelength to that of our surroundings. There's a song I'm all too familiar with that pops up every couple of years just
hovering above the radar until it disappears for another pop culture cycle. An old, old tune, so time-worn I can even remember my grandpa humming it as we raked leaves in the back garden of our house in New England. Black Orchid Blues. I went to church on Sunday, and I ain't going back, cause the devil took my soul down by the railroad track. I wish I'd told my baby that I'll be back one day, but while that devil's got me, I'll get on my and pray.
It's not the catchiest tune, but you'd be surprised how many times it's been referenced. Some dusty phonograph recordings made after World War I mark its introduction to the North American canon. before a few decades passed, and the Greenwich Village Folk Movement rediscovered it in the late 50s. After that, it traveled across the pond to the UK in 65, A certain floppy-haired boy band butchered the subtleties of its dark melancholia on a record I won't dirty my mouth by mentioning.
Motown had a few tries. some more successful than others around 69. It then lay semi-dormant for a generation or two, versions of it popping up here and there and compilation albums. with one infamous cover by the British heavy metal movement in the 70s that landed like a lead balloon. That is, until the birth of hip-hop. Then came a generation of DJs eager to sample the records of yesteryear, And who knows why black orchid blues stuck out among all the rest. Maybe something about the dark.
despairing melody chimed with the experiences of inner-city youth. Soon enough, snippets of the song from old recordings cropped up in gangsta rap and breakbeat compilations from the east to the west coast throughout the nineties. At least three Grammy-winning songs were built off the back of Black Orchid, its aural ghost made to linger in our collective unconscious.
When we arrive in the here and now, with all the dull regurgitation that constitutes culture in the early 2020s, guitar music is suddenly back. Singers in leather pants who sing like castrati are in vogue and lo and behold they're covering black orchid blues. No more acoustic guitars and earnest, folky voices. Now it's cranked, martial stacks and pristine autotune.
I own every recorded version of that song you care to mention, and many more you've never heard of. I've got old tape heads saved from recording sessions made before I was born, so brittle with age that if I played them on a reel-to-reel, they would... crumble into dust Imported foreign CDs, minidisc, colored vinyl, I've got them all. Every year I find some new iteration buried deep in the sediment of our culture. And what's better is that each one is unique.
Sometimes the words themselves change. I've counted at least twenty early variations, including a set of new verses, none of which sound tacked on by some hack songwriter who thinks they can improve on the original. They all just work. a song without end, a tantalizing game of paper chase that I doubt I'll ever see the end of.
This buyer's lifestyle requires a certain resolve to maintain it for any amount of time. Luckily, I've made it this far without encumbrance of a marriage or children to weigh me down with responsibilities besides my own upkeep and pleasure. I've worked in the publishing industry for some time now and have made use of a generous salary to keep me afloat as I indulge my collector's habit, though vice. is perhaps the better word for it, like a junkie's need for their fix.
The only other people I speak to semi-regularly are fellow crate diggers, mainly on internet forums. We recognize one another by our usernames, just more sets of zeros and ones floating in a digital ether. A typical online exchange is as follows. Search and destroy, 1969. Luna reissues. Worth trading in for, yes or no? The vinyl solution, 855. Negative. Lots of fakes circulating at the moment on the used market.
FML. Bunch of crappy bootlegs ruining it for the rest of us. Slow hand is God, 22. Laughing my ass off, you've been warned. Touching stuff, brusque and to the point. We don't bother with pleasantries. We're all just sharks. circling the deep waters, waiting for the scent of chum to send us ravenous. During a cheerful, personable discussion such as this on the r slash golden oldies forum, the subject of artists' credits arises. Now, the industry has come a long way.
and credits you'll find on an album these days will be about as long as your arm. Even the studio gophers get a mention at the end. But back in the day, you'd maybe get the name of the artist who sang on the record and nothing else. Studio players and songwriters were just guns for hire, treated the same way as Teamsters, paid a set salary and expected to keep themselves to themselves. The further back you go, the less you generally know, unless you're willing to really look for it.
When the industry was in its infancy, nobody knew if these newfangled records would ever take off, so why bother keeping track of who did what? For example, we know the blues legend Ledbelly played in the pines at his parole hearing when he was doing time at Imperial State. But we don't know when he wrote it. We don't even know if it was his song, and it's still heavily contested to this day. Nobody cared. And only a few weirdos like Alan and John Lomax who sat him in front of an aluminum disc
phonograph to record the heartache of his soul. So when the subject of black orchid blues becomes tonight's subject of discussion on the forum, I lean back and prepare to take these kids to school. I know every nook and cranny of that song. I can tell you what year the first pressing of it entered the American market back in 1935. the building it was recorded in, and the number of takes
it took to record. I've got an entire hard drive full of press clippings, snippets of rumor and anecdotes sifted from the biographies of all the good, bad, and downright mad players on the blues scene. That is, until someone with a username I don't recognize chimes in. Sold my soul at the crossroads. Yeah, but do you know who actually wrote it?
This is a redundant question. Nobody knows the answer. It's always been credited to anonymous or traditional folk song in every written example I've seen. It'd be like asking who wrote Three Blind Mice. Still, something about the way this young upstart frames his question irks me with its implication of an inside scoop. If I take the bait, he could turn around and get me laughed off the forums. If he's on to something, it might be worth digging further. I decide to take the discreet route.
Tell me more, at soldmysoul at the crossroads. Let's discuss this further in a private forum. Link is as follows. i set up a side forum closed off from the scrutiny of online rubberneckers at sold my soul at the crossroads whoever he is seems reasonable enough we check each other's credentials and see who's got the biggest and best toys
Turns out he used to own a small used record store in Birmingham, Alabama. He's got enough inside knowledge to pass a cursory background check and answers my more obscure questions without hesitation or prevarication. Soon enough, feeling we've got the measure of one another, I ask him to qualify his earlier statement. So who is the original author of Black Orchid Blues?
A moment's pause. The little bastard lets me stew in my own juices while I wait for him to show me the goods. Finally, he deigns to tell me... His name is Bud Hitch. Never recorded the tune himself, sold it to a music publisher's office in Memphis back in 1928 for $8 and a cask of bourbon. His name is... rather than was... That's perplexing. He'd be over a hundred years old if he was still alive, and seeing as he got paid in whiskey, that's doubtful. I ask for more proof.
Maybe an online paper trail I can follow? I avoid calling bullshit too soon just to see how he justifies this outlandish claim. Sold my soul at the crossroads continues. still living outside Memphis. A trailer park in the 70 between Lakeland and Arlington. I can give you the address if you want. If the details of this shaggy dog story are in any way authentic, I'd be able to hear the song that's haunted me directly from the source. It'd be like hearing Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address.
It might be a kind of closure to ask the man who put these words to paper what strange and mournful muse guided him as he plucked the rusty strings of an out-of-tune guitar all those years ago. I'm not usually a romantic, but this song has been with me my entire life. We banter back and forth until the enigmatic Mr. At Sold My Soul at the Crossroads gives me an address and a set of instructions if I'm to meet the creator.
Come alone. He's a recluse and gets easily spooked. Don't bring any kind of recording device with you and tell nobody where you're going. Don't bother calling ahead. He doesn't have a phone. This seems bizarre, but easy enough to follow. As for telling anyone where I'm going, I don't actually know anyone. Parents long since gone, siblings a distant and grudging periphery. The only friends I have exist abstractly on internet forums and the occasional swap meet on World Record Day.
I take a deep breath, knowing in my gut that this is madness. It could all be just some elaborate prank, undignified to fall for at my age. Still... There's something just... tantalizing enough to this yarn, a truth that the obsessive in me is eager to discover. I leave Mr. At sold my soul at the crossroads with a pleasant goodbye, neither confirming nor denying that the game is very much afoot. I take a few days off work.
Fly from JFK to Memphis International and hire a car for the rest of the journey toward Arlington. I've been down south before, but only in the stereotyped sense. drinking in honky-tonk bars around New Orleans, or admiring Nashville's carefully curated edginess. My route today is deep within the backwoods, a long, dusty stretch of empty highway punctuated by the occasional gas station. The AC running so high in the rented car it makes my eyes feel as dry as eggshells.
I turn along many a twisted, broken side road until I spot a cluster of trees that partially shade a patch of land containing a small congealment of RVs, trailers, and a lean-to that must serve as a park manager's office. A gangly yellow dog that's more mange than fur lolls stupidly in a tin roof kennel by the gate as I drive by before I park up under the crooked body of an aged walnut tree.
It's the middle of summer, an idiotic time of year for someone of my pallid complexion to be out in the sun. Wincing at the prickling heat on the back of my neck, I walk toward the lean-to at the trailer park entrance. An old-looking young guy comes limping out the shade of the lean-to, wearing denim overalls and a logoed t-shirt that bears the name of a popular beer brand. He gives a taciturn welcome.
I explain that I've come to see a park resident, Mr. Bud Hitch, this being his last known address. The park manager takes a long, slow chew on my remarks before giving back one of his own. Yeah, he's here. Though he ain't been seen out of his trailer since long ways by. Still posts the rent on time though. What do you want with him? Shit, I didn't think of that. Why am I here? I try to formulate a simple yet cunning explanation. Very little comes to mind. Oh well. I'm a relative.
He called up, asking for some company. Said he was sick. The manager squint. his brow slick with perspiration, the asphalt at our feet is practically sizzling. I don't know how long I can stand this tense southern silence, At last he gives a nod of understanding and points to the back of the park where a nod of mobile homes sits on crumbling brick struts. He's back the Attaway You see him, y'all tell him Red is due the first of the next month as of last Monday.
I relax, unclenching the knot of panic in my simmering guts I thank him and begin to walk in the direction of the mobile homes. Just before I can make a hasty exit, the manager catches me with a broadside. Hey, you sure he's in there? I mean, I never seen him. Not all the time I've been here. My daddy neither. Could be dead in there for all we know. It's just ghosts still paying the rent. I find the mobile home, number 07-06, far back at the park's border. It's squat.
flat-roofed and coated in a fine patina of rust and weathering. The curtains are drawn tight over the windows, and only a gentle chugging sound, which I take to be an air-con unit in the home, can be heard from inside. The mailbox outside is practically bursting with unopened junk mail. I take a breath, step onto the creaking, battered porch, and knock. Nothing. Still and silent is the grave. Maybe whoever lives here really is dead.
I knock again, counting out a thirty-second gap before trying again. On the third knock, I notice the door is now ever so slightly ajar. This is... Very, very stupid. Tennessee is a stand-your-ground state with more guns per person than cars. Entering the abode without permission would be a very clumsy way to commit suicide. Still. Curiosity gets the better of me. I nudge the door open just a crack, the toe of my sneaker barely grazing the threshold.
The inside of the trailer is gloomy, and a waft of cold air creeps through the cracks in the broken screen. I take a breath and push the door open until I can just about see what's on the other side. A fold-out couch covered in old newspapers and the remains of ancient TV dinners Empty beer bottles piled up like urns on every available surface, and an air conditioning unit held together with duct tape and jumper cables.
A neon beer light on a side wall blinks intermittently, giving off a brief blue radiance to illuminate the living room's disaster zone. I peek around the door to catch the outline of a stove, a linoleum countertop, and a set of chairs around a small folding table off to one side. A narrow hallway further back that I assume leads to the bedroom. A plastic stall is built into the other side of the hall that must serve as a shower bathroom unit.
And leaning against a far wall, lo and behold, a dusty old guitar case, like a coffin bound in peeling snakeskin. I carefully step into the room, looking for more signs of life. There's a radio on the kitchen countertop, but no TV or hi-fi anywhere. A pile of yellowing legal pads is stuffed down the side of the couch, covered with small, spidery writing.
There is so little light I can barely make out a word of it, so I lean forward just a little, hoping to catch some familiar lyric scrawled on these odd declarations. This place has all the trappings of a reclusive musical hermit, just as likely it could be the lair of a particularly untidy serial killer. All the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and a cold shiver of fear ripples through me when I hear a slight frail cough
from somewhere in the depths of the trailer. A voice calls out from the dark. It is shaky with age, though not in the least bit fearful. There's something on there? This is bad. This is really, really bad. When animals are startled, they either run, fight, or freeze. I'm quickly discovering that I'm the kind of primate that stays rooted to the spot in times of peril. I don't move a muscle. Even my breathing feels too loud. Are you, Emmett?
Rent's not due for twelve days, I thought. A shuffling sound as feet find their purchase on a linoleum floor, and a body rises from a creaking mattress to see what the commotion is about. The AC unit gives an abrupt and teeth-chattering rattle beside me, making me almost jump out of my skin. Out of the murk, a shadow begins moving up through the narrow hallway, feeling its way along the wood-paneled walls until it stands unsteadily in the kitchen nook.
Revealed is a thin, wiry silhouette a little over six feet tall, stooped over like a vulture in repose. A hand reaches for a light switch, and suddenly my spectral host is illuminated by the soft glow of a table lamp. He is so white, he's almost blue, like a deep sea fish that never saw the sun. Tiny violet-tinted spectacles perched on a stubby cauliflower nose and a dusty black fedora hanging for dear life on top of a shaggy mop of hair.
A crumpled black suit that hasn't been in fashion since the Great Depression. He is, without a doubt, the most perplexing image of a person I have ever encountered. His Robert Crumb illustration come to life. He also doesn't seem shocked to see me standing there, creeping uninvited into his home. His tone, when he eventually speaks, is affable but cautious. Hi. Uh, hi. You come about the rent? Am I day short? Uh, no.
That's all right, then. A pause. He leans painfully against the kitchen top and whistles through the thin rind of his few remaining teeth. So what do you hear about? Again, not a question I really anticipated answering. I'm here about a song. Really. You're a musician? Despite my hoarding of the medium, I haven't a musical bone in my body. If you put a gun to my head, I'd choose death over trying to attempt to hum a tune.
Stammering, I try to explain. No, I'm a collector. I mean, I collect songs, recordings, mostly. I'm here about a tune you wrote, that is, I think you wrote it, Black Orchid Blues. He steps closer, his dirty clothes rustling like dead leaves. A soft, sour aroma of decay wafts my way, reminding me of visits to elderly relatives at retirement homes. By the light of the table lamp I can see that the wrinkles on his face are as deep as razor slashes.
He moves at a glacier's pace, one timid foot stepping before the other, and his skin gives off an almost phosphorescent glow, pale as moonlight and thin as paper. The spectacles he wears must be prescription. Maybe he's so used to the semi-dark here that he's become photosensitive to light. He wheezes reflectively, taking careful steps toward the couch. Don't remember riding that one. Sure that's what it's called? I have to suppress the urge to blurt out an indignant... You're kidding!
I mean, it's THE song. It's the one that everyone covers. It's been imprinted on my soul since I could walk. That's why I traveled hundreds of miles to find you in the back end of nowhere. Maybe I'm mistaken. I've been sent on a wild goose chase, and now I'm standing in front of a tired, confused old geezer who just wants to be left alone. He doesn't give me time to dwell on this before he says wistfully, I wrote a bunch of tunes back in 26. 28 maybe. I can't recall.
I was drunk through most of it. Got paid some for it, but not much. Is this a kind of sundowning, dementia, stream of consciousness talking, or is he on to something? He can't have been around in 26 unless he started a musical career straight out of the womb. I try to encourage his thinking, maybe tease out some partial truth in the tumbling fog of his memories. I looked up your name before I arrived. It turns out you wrote some songs back in the 50s.
Though at first I thought that might have been a relative of yours. i didn't really think you'd still be here actually and come to think of it i didn't think you'd be A pregnant pause as I try to find the best words to suit my uncertainty. He cocks his head to one side, curious. Didn't think I'd be one. Uh... Well, he gives a wet, smoker's chuckle before he guides his body onto the one stretch of fabric on the couch not covered in debris.
He grins, stumpy yellow nubs of teeth spilling between pink gums. Music speaks to us all in its own way. Can't help the bodies we're born into. He relaxes, a crooked back sinking into the worn folds of the couch. He gestures to me to take a seat, and I pick a chair from the kitchen unit and take a perch between him and the AC. You live here alone, he gestures to the rest of the room in all its murky squalor as the blue light of his neon beer sign casts
shadows among the mounds of trash. Well, I guess it looks that way, don't it? I just wondered, maybe you had someone around looking after you? Any relatives, maybe? He gives a weary sigh, avoiding the question. Hands folded on his bony knees, he diverts the conversation back to the subject of music. That song you mentioned... Was it one of mine? Don't get many visitors asking about the old days. Just wondered if there's some special reason you came all this way to see me.
You come here alone? Yes. That's good. I don't like too many people knowing my business. The cold air of the AC makes me shudder involuntarily. I try my best to explain things as they are. That song, Black Orchid Blues, it's been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Something about it, something I haven't even got the vocabulary for, makes me seek it out in every form I can get my hands on. I was hoping you could tell me, if you are indeed the one who wrote it, What compelled you to create it? What is it actually about? He scratches the tip of his nose, making the frame of his violet-tinted spectacles jiggle. For a brief moment, I can see the color of his eyes, so brown they're almost black.
bloodshot around the edges, sunken deep into the socket. He reaches with a frail hand to a wad of yellowing paper wedged down the side of the couch and withdraws a pencil stub from his pocket. Shakily, he hands me them both. If you can't sing it nor play it, try writing it down for me. My eyes ain't what they were, so try to make the words big and bold.
Maybe then I'll remember. I hold the pad of legal paper and begin to write the first verse of black orchid blues, slow and deliberate as a child learning its first letters. i went to church on sunday and i ain't going back cause the devil took my soul down by the railroad tracks i wish i'd told my baby that I'll be back one day but while that devil's got me I'll get on my knees and pray I hold up my handiwork
which he inspects closely, eyes keenly focused in the Stygian gloom. He gives a slight shrug, but urges me to go on. and write out another verse. and then another black orchid black orchid growing dark upon my grave and when that hellhound find me lord jesus he will not save Soon I've written every possible line of the song. I can remember every obscure and meandering word I've heard.
Still, he urges me on. He seems hungry, almost eager that I continue. I shake my head, defeated. That's it. That's all of it. I know. There isn't any more. His voice takes on a cajoling softness. tempting me, as perhaps the serpent did to Eve. He seems more confident of himself, less crumpled and worn around the edges. Sure there is. But I didn't write it. Sure you did. It's been your song your whole life. See? You're writing it right now.
My hands are moving now of their own volition. The pen scratches across the page, skittering with diabolical energy. New words take form, appearing from thin air as an uneasy sense of purpose washes over me. that white devil of the noontime he played that fiddle well and when i heard him playing i was My body is numb, a frozen wad of flesh bound to the will of my twitching fingers. The old man rises from the couch a little straighter than before, with more certainty to his movements.
You keep writing there, son. You're doing a fine job of it. My eyes are peeled back, unblinking to catch every word I put to paper. A page is filled and I discard it with the others piled up beside the couch. I cannot stop. Not even if I wanted to. The old man whose alabaster skin has a newfound, firm luster steps easily over to the guitar case leaning against the wall, wiping the dust from its handle as he picks it up.
He takes a last disinterested look around the room before making his way toward the door. He croons to me with a newly minted sing-song voice. Before me, it was someone else who kept it going. And before that, who knows? All we need is for someone to come looking for the song. Then you pass it along like a game of telephone. Though it's been so long, I'm unsure how it really works. All I know is, it'll keep you living so long as you keep writing. But only enough. You can't leave here either.
It won't let you. I want to cry out. But my voice has been stolen. A clump of hair slides greasily from my head to the floor, grey with the rush of many years condensed into mere moments. The skin on my arms seems puckered and mushroom white, my breath scum haggard, rattling against the thin birdcage frame of my now ancient chest.
The man now, with violet-tinted spectacles and a dusty black suit, gives me a last pitying look before disappearing around the door's shadow, locking me away in the dark. Forever. I'll make sure the rent's paid up. Least I can do for you. I'm sorry it had to be you. But someone's gotta take on the burden. What are you seeing, kid? Please, make it stop! I wail from inside the lonely prison of my body.
words spill from me like burst arteries and the world becomes quiet and cold black orchid black for you and Wrong. down below to hear that white devil scream was written by and performed by Peter Lewis, Graham Rowat, Zane Shatt, and Josh Rebecca. The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish. After all this time... What time is it again? I feel like the clock stopped.
Time for Distraction 2. Time to just sink to the bottom. Time to get to the meat of his meat. Time for Greater Boston Season 4. That's right, on September 3rd. Greater Boston returns full-length episodes released So excited for you to hear it. But also, it's been three years since our last season wrapped. a little worried that people might have forgotten about us?
for you to help spread the word. Tell family tell you classmates, tell your cat, tell your local subway busker, but politely and with their performance point is now is time to share your love for Greater Boston on Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and TikTok and wherever else you post things. Come back on September 13th. officially begins.