Last week I visited Louisiana, invited by the lieutenant governor's office and the state's tourist board. I rode a golden mini-van from Lafayette to Baton Rouge to New Orleans. It is a remarkable part of the world, rich and singular, with enough music, food and conversation in which to spend a lifetime. But I spent five nights. I am going to try to document the visit in a piece for McSweeney's, but there are some things which are right for here as well.

Percy Sledge - "When A Man Loves A Woman".

Nowadays Percy Sledge appears in Baton Rouge car dealership commercials.

This is what I hear as we coast into town. Looking onto Louisiana's hot green fields, I struggle to imagine this. The Percy Sledge in my mind, the one who sings "When A Man Loves A Woman", is too distracted by love to ever do something so commercial. The Percy Sledge in my mind has never been able to keep a steady job. He is always staring out the window, or across the street, or over the butcher counter at a pretty girl. He stumbles on the sidewalk, neglects his chores, forgets to call his mum - all because of a passing woman's perfume, her smile, her lovely knees.

But I am told that Percy Sledge appears in Baton Rouge car dealership commercials, and when he takes the stage at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival, I believe it. The festival is modest and sincere - a dinky stage downtown, wedged beside fountains, with free entry and room for picnic blankets. My tour group is introduced to the festival organiser, to the publisher of the Advocate, to the mayor. We are handed Bud Lights. Then I duck through the photographers' pit and down in front of the fence, joining the crowd of couples and families and publishers and mayors and pretty girls, and Percy Sledge comes onto the stage in a royal blue suit, sunglasses, and Hawaiian shirt.

Percy Sledge, I realise, has always been a salesman. A salesman of LOVE. He is grinning wider than I have ever grinned in my life. He is grinning so wide that his grin cannot possibly be fake. "Ladies and gentlemens..." he says, and I imagine Percy Sledge in his living-room, feet up on a leather ottoman, watching a younger version of himself on VH1 and grinning so wide that he knocks over a porcelain bust.

Percy Sledge does not have the same calibre of voice that he once did. He sings thinly, sharps and flats, and it is his expert 9-piece backing band that makes the songs sound right. (Listening to this song now, later, I can hear the older Percy's voice hidden inside the younger Percy's voice; can hear the thinness and flats in the 1966 recording. And I realise it's what makes the song sound so urgent, human and endearing.) But Percy has brought something else to the stage - the self-confidence of a man who was once at the top of the world, and who has decided to never leave. Like all the best soul singers, Percy Sledge's greatest talent is the vitality of his mind's eye. The gap-toothed singer glows.

"Thank you for coming out to see ol' Perce," he says. He grins as wide as a number one record.

[buy]