The fish stare glassy-eyed from trays. The crabs, pulled from a swarming basket, lock pincers and entwine with one another, Lincoln Rorie, street crier, lifts the gills of a bluefish to show you how good it is. "If it's slimy, it's fresh," he says.

Like all the vendors at the fish wharf in Washington, D. C., he gives 14 crabs to the dozen. His rapid fire fish chants seem to pack almost as many rhymes in every line: "A Big Mac attack/ain't nothing but a snack/compared to the jumbos on sale right here/right here in the back."

Huckster Walter Kelly, with a different approach to the art, can stretch a single word to fill the melody of a whole blues line. On a brightly painted horse-drawn wagon crammed full of cardboard boxes and overflowing with produce, he hollers the name of a fruit, savoring each isolated sound so that an improvised blues languorously pours from a single term: "Wa-ter-mel-ho black seed, wat-er mel' wa-ter-mel-ho!"