"The music in my head" (The Jack Reacher Playlist)

To calm down, I ran music through my head. The chorus to "Smokestack Lightning." The Howling Wolf version puts a wonderful strangled cry at the end of the first line. They say you need to ride the rails for a while to understand the traveling blues. They're wrong. To understand the traveling blues you need to be locked down somewhere. In a cell. Or in the army. Someplace where you're caged. Someplace where smokestack lightning looks like a faraway beacon of impossible freedom. I lay there with my coat as a pillow and listened to the music in my head. At the end of the third chorus, I fell asleep.'

-- Jack Reacher, in Lee Child's Killing Floor, 1997.

Killing FloorHowling Wolf

Bobby Bland

Wild Child Butler

Blind Blake

Robert Johnson

John Lee Hooker