When I was a kid I used to devour old books about the jungles of Africa. The writing and the artwork were cartoonish, but they seemed real to me. Scared the hell out of me, actually. Needless to say, I couldn't stop reading.These days I can't stop listening to Australian bluesman C.W. Stoneking's "Jungle Blues," which is an almost spot-on musical approximation of my childhood books. Like the prose in those books, Stoneking's music is sparse, sometimes cartoonish. He often sounds like he's trying out for a spot as a circus announcer, but the music's all based on '20s-style country blues, and some of the tunes — "Jailhouse Blues," for example — seem as if they were penned by Robert Johnson or Charley Patton.
So here's my plea: Will some executive at Nickelodeon please give Stoneking his own TV show? There's a whole generation of fantasy-loving kids waiting to become blues fans.
