iRegret.net

I, too, am a journalist. A few years ago, in the course of trying to track down the ever-elusive Sly Stone, I ended up in Los Angeles, spending time with various musicians. One man I met was a musician named Dewey. A black man in his sixties, living in a cottage on the estate of a far more famous musician. Dewey had spent time in Little Richard’s band; he’d written “Farmer John,” which became the anthem for East Angelinos — he’d done a lot of stuff. We sat outside, drinking Mickey’s Malt Liquor, him playing guitar African-American style, sans pick. Later that week I threw a barbecue at the house I was renting, and Dewey came over. There was an old piano; half the keys didn’t work, but Dewey, somehow, managed to play around them — what sounded, sounded less like RnB than Thelonious Monk, but that wasn’t at all a bad thing.

I failed, utterly, to find Sly Stone. But I took with me a CD Dewey had given me — songs he’d cut in 1961 or so, with the Raylettes. I was just starting out, and not at all connected; told him I wouldn’t be able to do much with it. So I don’t regret that I never did.

What I do regret is that when, six months later, the man who’d introduced me to Dewey told me Dewey wanted to get in touch, I never did. I was overworked, or lazy, or too full of self-loathing to think back on the by-then blown assignment (I never did find Sly Stone). I didn’t think about Dewey again for a year or two, until guilt got the better of me, and I did sit down to write, and wrote, and googled Dewey’s name for the address and — if this were a short story I’d tweak the ending because it’s so utterly obvious — found Dewey’s obit instead. He’d died of lung cancer; I remembered the cough.

Submitted by: Alex