Johnny’s Dream

“Somebody told me recently that my voice was ‘lurid,’” Johnny Coley said the first time I called him, responding to my brilliant observation that he sounded on the phone just like he sounded in his music: roguish and sardonic, unquestionably Southern, wonderfully discursive, perhaps a touch ribald. “I mean, really—lurid?” he went on in half-serious protest. “That would describe the type of establishment where half-naked women lean out the door and try to lure you in.”