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

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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.

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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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