I don’t like havin favorite artists. They leave no room for anything else to pour in someone’s ears, they tend to be too proeminent, leaving behind their work. I think it’s quite excessive that I can’t listen to anything but blues songs, but this is way over my control. Yet, dispite all these thoughts that were disperately trying to organize my mind, I often faced the danger of procaliming Son House “my favorite” (actually I once did it, while registering on a popular blues forum).
My thoughts aside, let’s step into the analysis of a masterpiece.
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Charlie Patton’s “Green River Blues” might be the oldest blues we have evidence of. Beside several Delta loci communi, it contains the very first blues verse we have knowledge about, the famous “I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the dog” WC Handy heard back in 1903. And even if it isn’t the actual oldest blues out there, we have reasons to suspect it appeared in the very hot magma which, once irrupting, originated the blues.
Charlie Patton recorded the song in october 1929 at Grafton, Winsconsin, for the Paramount label.
First, let us hear the song
Well, maybe I should write sumffin about Peetie Wheatstraw’s / William Bunch’s life, but it would be useless, cause the little information available is already gathered in a good wikipedia entry. The only thing I could add is about the Buick that caused Peetie’s death: it was a gift Peetie received from a record company (Decca, if I’m not misstaken); it was an usual practice that record companies offered some 700$ car to bluesmen, instead of paying them the due percent of sales. OK, I’ll assume you have already read the wikipedia entry.
I won’t analyse any song for now; as a mater of fact, today I’ve been playing, exceptionally, Barbecue Bob (I also played in open D, which is also very rare), and I’m not quite ready to enter a brand new universe. I’ll write instead about two Peetie Wheatstraw verses; they’re from the “Peetie Wheatstraw Stomp no 2″, which Wheatstraw recorded in Chicago (March 26, 1937) for Decca. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to post the song, but here’s a sample. (NB. Peetie – vocals & piano – recorded this song with Lonnie Johnson). Finally, if you wana listen to other Peetie Wheatstraw blues, I found some on Soundpedia.
Now here’s the two verses:
In the previous posts of this series (part one and part two), we saw that Willie Brown’s Future Blues combined two themes, the anxiety about the future and the anxious love for a woman. In this post I’ll focus on the last two verses of the song.
I think I’m not wrong when saying that the fifth verse is the most subtle and complex in the entire song. First, let us give read it.
Girl, I know, you see dat picture now, Lordie, up, up on your mother’s, up on your mother’s, mama’s shelf?
I know, you see dat picture, Lord, up on your mother’s, mama’s shelf?
Lord, you know by dat I’m gittin’ tired of sleepin’ by myself.
Well, what about that? I bet you think it’s quite puzzeling (or even nonsensical). This verse is a perfect example of delta poetry; it could alsobe an argument for those who say that delta blues consists only in a set of juxtaposed formulae that would hardly make any sense at all.
The interpretative strategy which I’ll adopt is to clarify the verse’s elements and then construct a meaning from their respective interconnections.
The first element I’ll take into account is the picture. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the picture funtionned as a substitute for a person (das Bild als Ersatz, as Freud would put it). When someone was away, he left behind a photo to keep (a really mean keep) his place warm; it was a memento and an insurance that he wouldn’t be forgotten.
The second element I’d like to talk about is the shelf. In the pre-war times, the shelf was the family’s fridge. In a poor society, the shelf is a powerful symbol. When bluesmen want to show their miserable life, the first thing they think of is the shelf ith nothing on it; likewise, when they want to stress how much they miss their women, they say something like “I got apples on my table, i got food on my shelf” by I’m still dissatisfied. In a world where the suplies were an important capital, the shelf is undoubtly a symbol for the source of life.
Well, the other day I said that Willie Brown’s Future Blues was about a woman. And about the feeling of uncertainty. As you can see, I only got to make a few remarks on the first two verses of the song. Today I’m going to comment the third and the fourth verses.
Willie Brown mentions his woman in the second verse, by making an allusion to her “low-down way”; in the third and fourth verses he completes her description:
Lord, de woman I love, now, she’s five feet from de groun’,
I says woman I love, mama, is fi’ feet f’om de groun’
En’ she’s taylor-made and ain’t no hand-me-down.Lord, en I got a woman now, Lordie, she lightnin’ when she, she lightnin’ when she mamlish smiles,
I says, I’ve got a woman, Lord, she lightnin’ when she smiles,
Five feet en foo’ inches, and she’s jist good huggin’ size.
Blues scholars and linguists never get tired of giving account of the pre-war African- American’s apetite of using periphrastic expressions whenever theygot the opportunity. It is suggested that this way of speaking is having its roots in a brench of dialects in West Africa; when Black slaves got to America and began learning English, they woulf have preserved the African periphrastical stuctures, as well as the syntax or the way of using prepositions. So, a little woman will be “five feet from the ground”, while a dead man will be “six feet in the ground”.
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This is the first post (in a series of three) dedicated to the lyrics of Willie Brown’s Future Blues. I won’t say no more about the author. I’ll only analyse the first two verses and hope you’ll enjoy listening to the song.
Willie Brown’s Future Blues is about the woman he loves (jist git in love en de blues will come). It’s a blues about love and uncertainty. The way of expressing love is common and quite formal, but the subtle variations on the uncertainty theme are remarkable.
The first verse is a formularic phrase that stresses the bluesman’s confusion and fears:
Cain’t tell mah future, honey, I cain’t tell mah past
Cain’t tell my future, honey, I cain’t tell mah past
Lord, it seems like ev’ry minute sho’ gonna be mah last.
Usually, blues scholars are inclined to believe that such formulae express a general attitude of feeling rootless in African-American communities during the slavery time (which was to become acute during the seggregation). The interdiction of speaking their native African languages, the interdiction of performing African rituals (such as ancestors’ cult), or the slave owners’ systematic practice of building ethnically different groups are seen as the most important factors in slaves’ identity loss (and also in the construction of a new identity, based on religion and it’s promise of salvation). Lacking their past (ethnical as well as individual), the slaves also lacked their future, as they were incessantly in dager of being lended, sold or killed.
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This will be a short post, I promise. I’m writing it because I need to make clear the principles according to which I’ll analyze, from now on, the various pre-war blues lyrics I’m intersted in.
In substance and effect, the blues is oral poetry (performed in front of an audience). This means that compositions consist mainly (or entirely) in a set of “aedic formulae” (or topoi / loci communi). When you’re a folk singer, the general idea in using a formula is to trick the audience by singing something familiar while looking for the next verse. In such compositional circumstances, it may be senseless to analyze the lyrics. As a matter of fact, Skip James recalls that the cotton pickers who he sang for didn’t pay any attention to the lyrics, as interested in catching the rhythm and dancing as they were. But it is also true that the choice of a particular formula is not indifferent. A folk singer knows hundreds of formulae, feels that there are a few tens of them fitting to the song he’s singing and finally chooses a particular one. I agree that a singer may never be aware of what he’s doing when choosing a particular formula, but I don’t really care about it. and this lack of care (careless writing, as in Careless love) is consistent with the interpretative model I’ll be using.
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Willie Brown spent all his life (August, 6,1900, Clarcksdale, MS – December, 30,1952, Tunica, MS) in the Delta. He played with Charlie Patton and Son House and recorded by himself only a few (disputed) songs. Brown’s style is very sofisticated, inspired by the rythmic versatility of Charlie Patton and influenced by Son House’s stunning use of syncopes. As a matter of fact, he accompanied Son House from the early 30s to the late 40s.
Willie Brown is especilly known for being referred to in the famous Robert Johnson Crossroad Blues (“my friend-boy Willie Brown”) – some day, baby, I gonna write about that song. It is not quite sure if Johnson referred to him in his verse, but this is the most reliable hypothesis. Anyway, it is also known that the person who had to be notified in the occasion of Johnson’s death was called Willie Brown. At the time, in the Delta, there were at least two bluesmen having this name and probably thousands of other people, but this is a beautiful blues story which I want to believe in. If it is true, it might give us a hint in the attempt of understanding the character.
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Well, here we go.
I won’t be making no statement, but I declare we’ll be listening to some good music. We’ll be tapping. Moaning. Shouting and jumping.
Mainly, I’d like to write about forgotten songs, incomprehensible lyrics, rare albums or bluesmen’s lives. I won’t be following no structure, no rational lead, no nothing. I won’t make (too many) technical remarks. And I’ll try not to bother you too much.
I’ll be blogging, perhaps with some exceptions, about the pre-war blues – to a lesser extent about the classic blues and to a greater about the country blues and Chicago style. If you express particular demands about such and such artist or song, I’ll be glad trying to respond.
Recent entries
- Son House, County Farm Blues I
- Oldest blues: Charlie Patton, Green River Blues
- Peetie Wheatstraw, the High Sheriff from Hell
- The Devil’s Son-in-Law
- Willie Brown, Future Blues Part Three
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