booking

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:40 AM -0500 11/7/00, GEORGE THOMPSON wrote:
>   I am also put in mind of a stanza from an old
>country blues called "Keys to the Highway".  I've not heard this for
>many years, and my very limited blues CD collection doesn't include
>it, so I can't refesh my memory.  Are there any blues hounds in our
>coven?  I recall the version I knew to have been recorded by Big
>Bill Broonzy, probably in the 1930s or 1940s.  In any event, as I
>recall, the stanza goes:  "I've got the keys to the highway, I'm
>booked up and bound to go, I'm gone to leave here running, cause
>walking is most too slow."  Here there is a connection between being
>booked up and the desire for speed.
>
Eric Clapton has a wonderful cover of this piece, very bluesy and
almost ten minutes long, on the Derek and the Dominos album, but it
doesn't sound like there's any "booking", though.  Best I can make
out the verse it's something like

I got the key [yes, singular] to the highway
Deep down in my soul
Got to leave here running
Walking's just too slow.

larry