Death Trance
“The night was hot and sticky and there was music in the air, although the Beale Street of nineteen eighty-four was nothing like the Beale Street that W. C. Handy and B. B. King and Rufus Thomas had known. This was the Beale Street National Historic Preservation District, a sanitized version of the Beale Street that had once been, the Beale Street of blues clubs and whores and tangled trolley-car cables. The black high-steppers had long since gone, in their shiny top hats and tails and their ladies on their arms. So had the farmers in their straw hats and bibs. Hulbert's Lo-Down Hounds had not been heard here since the Forties, and even the Old Daisy Theater had become an 'historic, interpretative centre.’Still, the Walker Rooms retained something of their post-war sleaze. There was a red-flashing neon sign outside saying 'Blues, Food,’ and Randolph had to climb a narrow, worn-out staircase to the second floor, where an air-conditioning unit was rattling asthmatically and a black girl ...with dreadlocks and a tight white sleeveless T-shirt was sitting at a plywood desk silently bopping to a Walkman stereo.MoreLess
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