Charley Patton - A Spoonful Blues

Charley Patton's take on cocaine use and abuse is portrayed in the wonderful, 'A Spoonful Blues' recorded in 1929. The song actually doesn't use the word cocaine, instead referring to the small spoons used to snort cocaine with but which could also refer to the preparation of heroin or cocaine by melting it into water in a spoon above a flame for injection. Patton is also playing with a double entrendre here - the spoonful of lovin'. This openness of interpretation is skilfully enhanced by Patton's musical representation of the words 'spoonful' with a perfectly bended note: