How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times...

...and live? Blind Alfred Reed's song asked that question not long after the 1929 stock market crash. Ry Cooder recorded Reed's song on his first album in 1970, and has been reworking it ever since. In this 1987 concert performance, Flaco Jimenez cracks up as Ry plays the old slide guitar player game, "How high can I go?" (Answer: Past the humbucker in his frankenStrat, and damn near to the Rickenbacker horseshoe magnet pickup.) But he returns incisively to the question.