"Black Water" (The Doobie Brothers)

"Black Water" from the 1974 album What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits was written by The Doobie Brothers' lead guitarist Patrick Simmons.  It was his very first single for the band and, incidentally, the band's first #1 song.  And it came about by accident.
"Black Water" originally was released without fanfare as the B-side of the single "Another Park, Another Sunday," which is itself a great, soulful ballad about lost love by band founder Tom Johnston.  Thing was, "Another Park..." contains the lyric My car is empty and the radio just seems to bring me down, which didn't sit too well with radio programming directors at the time.  So they had DJs flip the single, and "Black Water" took off instead, leaving Johnston's A-side in the dust.
In a 2012 interview with Vintage Guitar magazine, Simmons recounted how he had been working on the song's riff–"kind of a lazy delta blues thing," in his words–just before the band played its first shows in New Orleans.  After soaking in the Crescent City, Simmons said the pieces of the song easily fell into place.
"I think it was all the wonderful experiences–the food, walking along the Mississippi, the French Quarter, Dixieland music in the clubs."
He also recalls how a simple trip to the laundromat resulted in one of the verses of the song.
"I wrote the second verse while riding a streetcar up St. Charles [Avenue] to the Garden District to do my laundry. It was raining–one of those summer showers where it’s sunny. It was a magical moment for me. So I jotted down the lyrics. If it rains, I don't care. Don't make no difference to me. Just take that streetcar that's goin' Uptown."
I think that line and the little tag at the end of the chorus And I ain't got no worries 'cause I ain't in no hurry at all are kind of the essence of the whole song.  (Side note: Hearing that lyric always brings to mind a scene in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, where Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise, and Marylou are cruising into New Orleans at sunset, grooving to a radio show that's blasting bop jazz and funky R&B, and the DJ keeps saying, "Don't worry about nothing.")
Having been to New Orleans several times, I would be lying if I said the city is all Twainian paddlewheel boats and "funky Dixieland" jazz.  It's not–not for the past century, anyway. (Unless, that is, it's being artificially reenacted in the Quarter for the benefit of wealthy European tourists).  
Nevertheless, Simmons does capture certain qualities of the city that ring true: that living time capsule feel you get riding a century-old streetcar through the Garden District, and that live-and-let-live, no worries/no hurries vibe.  New Orleans is the kind of place where you step inside some shady watering hole just to get out of the heat for a moment, only to find yourself sidled up to a 200-year-old bar, sipping some bright green concoction over sugar cubes that's rumored to cause brain damage, buying rounds of Sazeracs for people who were strangers a mere 60 minutes before, and then suddenly realizing it's 1 am but not really caring that you and midnight never rubbed shoulders, because, God willing and the levees hold, there's always tomorrow.
That's what I hear when I listen to this song.  
That, and I hear a track that defies easy categorization.  (Is it Cajun R&B?  That straight-outta-the-bayou fiddle might make one think so.  Is it funk-grass?  That acoustic finger-picking against Tiran Porter's fat bass would help it qualify.  Swamp rock?  Maybe–but then where does that Southern Gospel harmony/a cappella breakdown fit into the picture?)
Whatever it is, I keep revisiting it.  New Orleans, too.