TROUBLE IN MIND
By Richard M. Jones
Trouble in mind, I’m blue,
But I won’t be blue always;
Lord the sun’s gonna shine
In my back door some day.
I’m goin’ down to the river
I’m gonna bring along my rockin’ chair,
If the these blues don’t leave me,
I might rock away from here.
On Harptab.com
There are two more verses that Janis Joplin sang on occasion
Now all you men's the same
But now I'm old enough to change my name
Lord, that sun's gonna shine
In my back door some day.
I'm gonna lay my head
On that lonesome railroad line
And let the Two Nineteen
Ease my troubled mind.
Janis’ rendering of any song she sang, but especially the blues, is of course legendary. “Trouble in Mind,” or sometimes it is written “Troublin’ Mind,” is no exception. In this rehearsal with Steve there are only two verses sung, but apparently Janis knew and recorded more words to it in other circumstances. From one of the verses shown above, it sounds as if she longed for a really good man to come along and marry her, and that her lack of finding such a guy was a deep down personal sorrow for her.
The rocking chair as a means of escape is an interesting idea. I have no information about that specifically, but I do remember seeing a movie once long ago called “The Rocking Horse Winner,” where the dad in the family was losing everything to a race horse gambling addiction. The young son, living in this very tense family situation, took to riding his rocking horse to the point where he went into a sort of hysteric trance, in which the name of the next winning horse would somehow come to him.
Just thought I’d mention that.
—JS
|