Anarchy 51/Blues walking like a man

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Blues walking
like a man

CHARLES RADCLIFFE

It is im­pos­sible to say with any certainty when the blues be­came a com­plete mus­ical form, re­cog­nis­ably dif­fer­ent from its ante­ced­ents—the songs of the farms and levee camps, the work songs, axe songs, arwhoolies, hol­lers and rags. It is equally dif­ficult to as­cer­tain in which of the south­ern states of the USA it ori­gin­ated. Many of the early sing­ers were mi­grat­ory la­bour­ers or blind men who trav­elled widely to beg and earn money by sing­ing, so it seems prob­able that it was a con­cur­rent de­vel­op­ment over large areas of the Deep South. What is quite cer­tain is that the blues was not a cre­a­tion of any one man (W. C. Handy’s self-inflat­ing claim to be Father of the Blues has al­ways seemed more than a little lu­di­crous to blues en­thus­i­asts). Neither was it a pro­duct of city life. Bessie Smith, for ex­ample, is fre­quently held to be the fin­est blues singer ever to re­cord but she re­corded Clas­sic city jazz-blues, which were a des­cend­ant, rather than a close re­la­tion, of the rural blues, al­though they found their way onto record earlier. Her style is most often praised by jazz critics, which cor­rectly in­dic­ates her posi­tion as the cre­ator of jazz-blues, rather than a blues singer per se.   Al­though the pre­cise geo­graph­ical, his­tor­ical and mus­ical ori­gins of the blues are un­cer­tain, the so­cial con­di­tions which pro­duced it are well-re­corded, not least of all in the blues itself. In the white su­prema­cist so­ci­ety of the south the negro was in a situ­a­tion of ter­ri­fy­ing para­dox:

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iso­lated by race and colour, yet forced to con­form to the mores of a so­ci­ety in which he was de­nied a voice and from which he was rigor­ously ex­cluded. It is, in­cid­ent­ally, one of the most bit­ter iron­ies of the his­tory of Amer­ica’s negroes that they should have prac­tised their own form of ra­cial­ism—that of dis­tinc­tion based on Creole blood, “yellow-skins”, “brown-skins” and “black-skins”. Despite these con­di­tions being a prim­ary factor in the cre­a­tion and evo­lu­tion of the blues, it is not usu­ally a music of di­rect so­cial pro­test and the few mag­nif­i­cent pro­test blues are far out­num­bered by blues on women, men, cars, and rent, on the every­day life of an op­pressed min­or­ity.

  The blues has in­flu­enced jazz, “pop” music and even “seri­ous” music, yet its struc­ture is ex­tremely simple. In its de­vel­oped form it amounts to a three line stanza, with one line re­peated and a third line, rhymed or un­rhymed, in the form of call and re­sponse, a herit­age from work songs. Sleepy John Estes, one of the fin­est liv­ing rural sing­ers, sings:

Now I was sit­tin’ in jail wi’ my eyes all full of tears (repeat)

Y’know, I’m glad didn’t get life­time, boys, that I ’scaped th’ ’lectric chair

and Jaydee Short sang bit­terly:

So dark was the night now, people; cold, cold was the ground (repeat)

Me ’n’ my bud­dies in two fox­holes, had to keep our heads on down

  Earlier sing­ers drew more on the en­tire tra­di­tion of negro folk-song and less on a still in­com­plete blues tra­di­tion, and there was less fixed form. Bukka White, in a haunt­ing blues, sings:

I’m lookin’ far in min’, be­lieve I’m fixin’ to die,

I be­lieve I’m fixin’ to die,

I’m lookin’ far in min’,

I be­lieve I’m fixin’ to die.

I know I was born to die, but I hate to leave my chil­len cryin’

Mother, take my chil­len back, be­fore they let me down,

’Fore they let me down,

Mother, take my chil­len back,

’Fore they let me down,

And don’ leave them standin’ and cryin’ on the grave­yar’ groun’

  Another early singer, Skip James, sings in two line verses:

Hard time here, every­where y’ go

Time’s harder than they ever been be­fore.

If you cer­tain y’ had money, you bet­ter be sure,

’Cause these hard times will drive y’ from do’ to do’.

  Like Son House, the doyen of the Delta sing­ers, and the superb Charlie Patton, the “father” of the Mis­sis­sippi Blues, White and James were from Mis­sis­sippi, and played their gui­tars in the pecu­liar re­gional “bottle­neck” style. This in­volved the use of a knife, a steel ring or a smoothed down bottle­neck which was usu­ally placed on the thumb or little finger, and used as a drone on the strings of the guitar. It gave their in­stru­ments a high-pitched whin­ing sound which they were able to util­ise for lyric pas­sages, for simple rhythmic or melodic ac­com­pani­ment or as a highly dram­atic form of punc­tu­a­tion. Any blues looks rather bleak in print, be­cause it is lit­er­ally only half there. In the case of the

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early Delta sing­ers it gives a more than usu­ally hol­low effect.

  Al­though Mis­sis­sippi takes pride of place in any dis­cus­sion of blues, there were fine sing­ers from other areas. Jay Bird Coleman, a su­perbly fero­cious har­mon­ica player came from Bes­semer, Ala­bama, and was so suc­cess­ful that the local Ku Klux Klan took over his man­age­ment. Blind Boy Fuller came from Carolina, Oscar Woods (The Lone Wolf) from Louisi­ana, Peg Leg Howell and Blind Willie McTell from Georgia, Bill Broonzy from Arkansas, and Furry Lewis from Ten­nes­see. Also from Ten­nes­see came the two great jug bands—Gus Cannon’s Jug Stomp­ers and the Mem­phis Jug Band. The other great jug band—the Birming­ham Jug Band—was from Ala­bama.

  The early blues found its way onto re­cord in the early ’twen­ties, not through the de­vo­tion of eth­no­mus­ic­o­lo­gists but be­cause re­cord com­pan­ies real­ised that it was a com­mer­cial pro­pos­i­tion. Most of the early re­cord­ings were “field-re­corded” in rural centres like Mem­phis, Dallas and At­lanta, in small halls and bars, wherever space could be found to set up equip­ment, and the re­cords, by Skip James, Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son, Son House, Charlie Patton, Gus Cannon, Jed Daven­port and later Sonny Boy William­son, Bill Broonzy, Tommy McClennan, Blind Boy Fuller and Cripple Clarence Lofton, flooded through the mails and from the small-town stores into thou­sands of negro homes. The sing­ers soon found them­selves “race-heroes” and the de­ris­ively labelled “race-record” market was a boom­ing busi­ness. For­tun­ately men like Ralph Peer of Victor and Mayo Williams of Para­mount had ex­cel­lent taste and much of the early field re­cord­ing was of great inter­est and super­lat­ive qual­ity.

  It re­quires enorm­ous ef­forts of ima­gin­a­tion to under­stand the con­di­tions in the Deep South dur­ing the years in which the blues began. After the Civil War, when negroes had been given their “free­dom”, the white south, with em­bit­tered ruth­less­ness, set about the re-en­slave­ment of the negro pop­u­la­tion by “legal” means. The negroes soon found them­selves driven off their newly-gained land by former owners and the fast de­vel­op­ing rail­road com­pan­ies. They were in­creas­ingly the vic­tims of Jim Crow legis­la­tion, de­signed to keep them in their place re­gard­less of the Four­teenth Amend­ment. They were forced to work on the rail­roads; to work the land as tenant share-crop­pers, which meant in ef­fect re­ver­sion to slav­ery; to work on the levees, in the saw­mills or tur­pen­tine camps, which be­came sym­bols of ra­cial sub­ju­ga­tion. Wherever they went they were swindled and ex­ploited with soph­ist­ic­ated sav­agery, de­signed, con­sciously or not, to de­mor­al­ise as well as to en­slave. Often they were charged more for food and lodging than they could pos­sibly earn. It is a bit­ter com­ment­ary on the south that when Alan Lomax issued his superb Blues in the Mis­sis­sippi Night re­cord­ings in 1957, he still felt it neces­sary to hide the real iden­tit­ies of the three sing­ers whose remin­is­cences were con­tained on the record. The per­form­ers are listed simply as Sib, Natchez and Leroy but they were in fact the har­mon­ica player Sonny Boy William­son, the gui­tar­ist Bill Broonzy and the pian­ist Memphis Slim Chat­man. There was always the added risk of na­tural ca­lam­ity. Texas is sub­ject to floods and so is Mis­sis­sippi: when

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the levees burst in 1927, it was the negroes, forced to live very close to the banks, who died in thou­sands. Se­greg­a­tion af­fected every­thing. Even hos­pitals re­fused to treat negroes, and al­though the Bessie Smith death-legend is largely apo­cry­phal, many negroes died through lack of suf­fi­cient med­ical care.

  In the search for bet­ter work and liv­ing con­di­tions, thou­sands of negroes trekked north, from the ’twen­ties up to the pres­ent, in the sort of exo­dus which is a fea­ture of the his­tory of ra­cially tor­mented min­or­it­ies. They ar­rived in the north by road and rail. They had no right on either, but the rail usu­ally gave them a bet­ter chance. They could either walk the long straight lines—always risk­ing a fall be­tween them, and with it death, in­duced by the tir­ing and hyp­notic ef­fect of doing so—or they could “jump” a train. This was risk­ier, but quicker. The trav­el­ler stands on one of the few slow curves in the track and then, in Paul Oliver’s words:

  “. . . breaks from cover and dashes to­wards the track tak­ing ad­vant­age of the slow­ing of the train to make board­ing pos­sible, and of the bend to hide his move­ments. Crooked fin­gers clutch the coup­lings and he swings peril­ously on the sway­ing truck be­fore get­ting a firmer grip. He may make for the blinds if he can. These are the bag­gage cars next to the tender, which are ‘blind’ or, in other words, have no side door. Sit­ting on the step he is safe and out of reach of the brakeman’s club. . . . More dan­ger­ous, but out of sight and un­ap­proach­able, are the brake rods that run be­neath the freight cars. Risk­ing his life he may try to worm his way across these, or if he is un­usu­ally adept he may carry a small board to throw across the rods and then pre­cip­it­ate him­self upon it in the nar­row gap be­tween them and the under­neath of the truck . . . in icy winds, in chok­ing poison­ous fumes of the rail­road tun­nels, he may freeze to numb­ness or suc­cumb to ex­pos­ure and drop to cer­tain death . . .”

  There can be few worse con­dem­na­tions of a so­ci­ety than that it should make this method of travel ac­cept­able. Des­pite the risks the exo­dus con­tin­ued, and women and chil­dren, as well as men, risked road and rail to go north:

Oh, stop your train, let a poor boy ride.

Don’t you hear me cryin’?

Woo oo woo oo wooo . . .

Oh, fare you well, never see you no more.

Don’t you hear me cryin’?

Woo oo woo oo wooo . . .

Oh, train I ride, smoke­stack shine like gold.

Don’t you hear me cryin’?

Woo oo woo oo wooo . . .

  With them they took their blues, into rail­side hobo jungles where in hope­less pov­erty they could scratch a liv­ing, com­par­at­ively free from white inter­fer­ence, into the fast-de­vel­op­ing north­ern ghet­toes, into “New World”. The blues proved re­mark­ably re­si­li­ent to city life at first. There were re­fine­ments which have con­tin­ued up to the pres­ent: drums, basses and pianos were added to the more port­able, and more

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mu­sic­ally flex­ible in­stru­ments fa­voured by rural mu­si­cians, such as har­mon­icas (known as “harps”, viol­ins, gui­tars and jugs which, when blown into, acted as bass re­son­at­ors. How­ever it was not until just before the last war that the blues al­tered dra­mat­ic­ally and ir­re­voc­ably, and even today there are traces of Mis­sis­sippi in the blues of some Chi­cago sing­ers.

  From the blues re­cord­ings we have a record of negro life, its joy and laugh­ter—blues were prim­ar­ily to en­ter­tain—as well as its bit­ter­ness and sor­row. We have stor­ies of broken re­la­tion­ships, of rent parties, of work in the fields of the south and the mills and fac­tor­ies of the north. Much of it is fine folk po­etry, some of inter­est be­cause of its sub­ject, at its bext an in­dex of the sing­er’s feel­ings as well as a vivid pic­ture of so­cial con­di­tions and the des­pair of the negro’s brut­al­ised life, a des­pair usu­ally light­ened only by the spir­it­ual re­lease of re­li­gion, the erotic re­lease of sex or the phys­ical re­lease of vi­ol­ent pleas­ure. A much re­corded blues begins:

Rock me, mama, rock me all night long (repeat)

I want you to rock me, mama, till by back ain’t got no bone.

and Chester Burnett (Howling Wolf) sings:

Tell ole Pistol Pete, every­body gonna meet,

To­night we need no rest, we really gonna throw a mess,

We gonna break out all the win­dows, we gonna kick down all the doors,

We gonna fix a Wang Dang Doodle, all night long, all night long. . . .

Tell Fats and Wash­board Sam, that me ’n’ every­body gonna jam,

Tell Shakey, Box Car Joe, we got saw­dust on the floor,

Tell Jennie Mae, till I die we gonna have a time,

Well the fish scent fill the air, there’s love juice every­where.

We gonna fix a Wang Dang Doodle. . . .

  Race records catered for vari­ous au­di­en­ces and ranged from the harsh re­li­gious songs of Blind Willie John­son—once ar­rested for in­cite­ment out­side a Customs House, for sing­ing his Sam­son song, If I Had My Way I’d Tear This Build­ing Down—to the lilt­ing, leer­ing blues of Blind Boy Fuller, which were often simply strings of sex­ual meta­phores. John­son and Fuller epi­tom­ised two main sources of re­lief for the negro—re­li­gion and sex. There were also songs on the cata­logues about every­thing from co­caine snif­fing to men­in­gitis, and there were a large num­ber of blues about prison, suf­fered usu­ally as a re­sult of minor of­fences but fre­quently enough for more vi­cious crimes, and quite often for murder.

  Prison was a daily fea­ture in the lives of many fam­il­ies. It is some in­dic­a­tion of the vi­cious­ness of the pris­ons and prison farms that, as re­cently as 1951, four­teen pris­on­ers in the Louisi­ana State Peni­ten­tiary at Angola ham­strung them­selves rather than sub­mit to beat­ing with the “bat”, a par­tic­u­larly crude, four­teen pound leather strap which, ac­cord­ing to Paul Oliver, “can break a brick at a single blow”. Yet prison farms, like Angola, were pre­fer­able to the over­crowded, un­healthy, closed pris­ons. The prison system is, even by con­serv­at­ive judge­ments, totally in­ade­quate and ar­chaic and even where there have been Fed­eral

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Com­mis­sions the south has ig­nored them and their re­com­mend­a­tions. Des­pite the hor­ror, many negroes have test­i­fied that life in prison was less fright­en­ing than life out­side: at least in prison the next meal was as­sured, the tyranny rarely var­ied and there was less chance of the casual cruelty which typ­ified the lives of so many ra­cial under­dogs. The great folk singer Lead­belly sang his way out of prison, but not all sing­ers were so lucky—Big Joe Wil­liams did a term at Parch­man Prison Farm, Mis­sis­sippi, and so did Bukka White, who sang a fine blues about it. Hog­man Maxey and Robert Pete Wil­liams did time at Angola. More re­cently the great Chi­cago gui­tar­ist, Auburn “Pat” Hare got a ninety-nine year sen­tence for shoot­ing his mis­tress’s hus­band and a po­lice­man who tried to ar­rest him.