Busker Days: "For a Ton of Gold" Vinnie 'Blue' De La Pruce

Vinnie, or Blue to his friends, is the first busker I recorded who relied greatly on his take. Hailing from New Orleans, he was displaced by the devastating flood of October 2005 we've come to know as Katrina. Somehow he ended up in San Francisco and he aint going back. To be precise, lately he finds himself laying down some blues right in the epicenter of SF, the Powell Street cable car turn-around. (That's right, he's street level to where I recorded the African musicians which can be heard here). Vinnie parks himself right next to the end of the line of Euro-touros eager to hop on a cable car, and maybe its because they've already endured the onslaught of mega-loud raptap dancers or the silver painted robo-mimes atop the milk cart, but these touros are mostly holding on to the green when they see Blue. He says lately money is slow and hard, the same I've heard from others. And I've watched them. Most pass by Blue, just another curiosity. I say, throw him some coin!

Blue plays a harp and sings through a combination of a small amp and a speaker phone, all powered by battery. Enjoy his minimalist blues tune, For a Ton of Gold, here.

Busker Days: Cocaine Blues

It had been a rather steady task for some time: log out, elevator down, hit the street, turn left, walk down Post to Montgomery BART, slide my ticket through the turnstile, get on the right train, get off at the right station, call home, then get on my bike and get on home.

One day it all changed when Johnny Cash was playing at my station. No joke!

OK, it wasn’t exactly the man in black, but to my ears it didn’t matter. This was the real deal, as if Johnny himself anointed this rough and tumble busker every day to play it right. The whole catalogue was at hand, so it seemed, from Sun to American, and he was quite a regular performer too, this prolific, pink-haired punker. I’d say two days a week I could count on him … and have to pony up. For a year and a half and more he played the hits, but he also played songs I didn’t know, so I began to wonder. Put him to the request test I thought, something a little less known. I plopped a buck in his case and asked him if he could do Train of Love, an early Cash-penned song I had been learning on my own time. No pause at all and he nails it!

One day I introduce myself and ask him - Jesse Morris is his name it turns out - for recording privileges, to which he kindly obliges. Listen here to Jesse’s kick-ass version of Cocaine Blues, a song made famous by Johnny on his At Folsom Prison live album released in May, 1968, which, Jesse kindly informed me, was written and recorded by one T.J. Arnall in 1947.

Although I haven’t seen Jesse too much lately (this was my first busker recording, by the way) and when I have seen him he is just as likely to be playing punk as he is Cash, I would be happy to make a request for you (and perhaps make a recording). What’s your request?