Charlie Patton recorded the song in october 1929 at Grafton, Winsconsin, for the Paramount label.
First, let us hear the song

charlie_patton_-_green_river_blues.ogg

Now I think we can analyze the song’s lyrics.

The first verse:

I wade down Green River, rollin’ like a log
I wade down Green River, rollin’ like a log
I went down Green River, rollin’ like a log

According to our usual logic, the sentence seems making no sense; back in the 60s, this was a characteristic of the blues ) One should first of all notice the use of a analogy, which is a frequent procedure in all kinds of oral traditions. In a psychological point of view, the comparison with the logs rolling down the river may suggest a inertial state the poet might have felt. It is about feeling powerless, with any will anihilated by a trauma. One could be tempted to believe that such a state of mind was induced by the behaviors associated with the seggregation laws, but let us not overinterpretate; he feeling might equally have been induced by the end of an affair; or, more probably, by a recurrent poetic formula. Ina Positivistic account, the rolling log comparision might recall a manner of transportation, beautifully described by mark Twain. But don’t forget that the verse is about a log, which would probably roll loose, maybe after a flood; the poet is thus rolling in derive, after a trouble in mind.

The second verse provoked manny discussions in the blues researchers’ millieux:

I think I heard the Marion whistle blow
I think I heard the Marion whistle blow
And it blew jist like my baby gettin’ on board.

The issue debated here was the referrence of the “Marion whistle”. eventually, everybody seemed to agree it referred to a steamboat named after a town. The bluesmen’s relation to steamboats is very complex; it’s primarly a metaphor for the freedom of moving here and there, and bluesmen lways talk about their compulsive desire of hitting the road. Bukka White for instance stated that everytime he heard a train whistle blow he felt like going and he immediatly took the roadof the train station. There is another memorable description by Mark Twain of this “moving fever”. Blues historians explain this “keep on moving” desire in two different way: either as an expression of the feeling of being without roots that the slave narratives always stress, or as an symbolical expression of the freedom, since the former slaves weren’t forced any more to stick with a particular plantation. As for the Patton song’s verese, i believe it isn’t quite this old. I think it was “written” during the first migration wave, the one towards the Southern cities, when Black women began getting jobs as maids, perhaps around 1915-1920.

I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the dog
I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the dog
I’m goin’ where the Southern cross the dog

This is obviously the most discussed verse in the song and maybe in the blues’ history. WC Handy talls the following story: by one night, back in 1903, while waiting for a train in an old dirty station, he fell asleep; then he was woke up by a troubling sound, a knife sliding on the strings and a voice singing the verse. After that night, Handy never get the sound out of his mind. This is the first mention of the blues; and it is almost contemporary with another mention, by Ma Rainey, who heard a girl singing a deep rural song whitch inspired her in finding her path in music and life. The verse is dated post 1894, when the two railroads crossed.
The fourth verse,

Some people say the Green River blues ain’t bad,
Some people say the Green River blues ain’t bad,
Then it must not have been them Green River blues I had

is a very fluid topos in the Delta; Son House loved this formula and didn’t hesitate to use it in several songs (I’d mension only the incredible version of the “Walking Blues” recorded by John Lomax in 1947; it is available on the Last Fm Station). If have no clue about the formula’s origin; if you had any and wished to share it, I’d sincerily appreciate it.

It was late last night, everything was still
It was late last night, everything was still
I could see my baby up on a lonesme hill.

Now,what was his baby doing up there? Was she alone? And why on the same ole hill, so recurrent in blues? “Lonesome” is a frequently used epithete, and it can apply to any sort of places. A bedroom deserted by a woman is always lonesome; by night, any dirty road gets lonesome. And the bluesman’s soul is often sad and lonesome.

How long, evening train been gone
How long, evening train been gone
Yes, I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.

This is another frequent formula, which left Delta and went up to Chicago. The formula is composed by two topoi (“evening train” and “I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long”. I think that the third identifiable topos of the verse, “how long”, became a topos only after the release of the famous “How Long Blues”. The verse is quite puzzling, because this time the singer’s baby seems having left him by train. But maybe the inconsistency of this verse with the second one didn’t trouble Charlie as much as his baby’s departure did. So, briefly, he was left by his baby – who went looking for a job – and he’s worried, but he hopes he won’t be no more. Why that? Well, because he has some suspicions about her being unfaithful to him: late at night, the poet cannot sleep, imaginig his baby up on a lonesome hill and not being alone. He won’t be worried long because he hopes he’ll forget her. Why do I think so? Because of the last verse:

I’m going away, i know it may get lonesome here
I’m going away, i know it may get lonesome here
I’m going away, i know it may get lonesome here

Everything there reminds him of his lost love. And when you’re born with the blues and your baby done left you (because she was looking for a job in Memphis), it seems to you it is unbeareble. You just hafta go.

In conclusion, I could’n say the “Green River Blues” is the oldest blues out there, but it surely is particularly informative in a sociological point of view, offering an insight in the consequences of the first work migration in the first decades of the 20th century. The song probably dates, as said before, around 1915-1920.

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.

The third essential element is the reference to the mother (wich is underlined by the lexical variety). In the Black pre-war community, the mother was the person who ensured the family’s stability and existence. Some of the most impressive blues ever written explore the being motherless theme (e.g. Barbecue Bob as a motherless chile).

The fact that Willie Brown’s baby keeps his picture on her mother’s shelf is a kind of promise she’s making. The verse express the bluesman’s hope for getting settled in a traditional way; he suggests that the woman’s intentions are serious (his picture – i.e. his persona – is on the mother’s -i.e. the family symbol – shelf – i.e. the symbol of welfare. OK, sorry for that .

The third line of the verse dramatically reminds the listener of the anxiety undergoing the bluesman’s love. Although the woman partially responds to his love, she wouldn’t go further. And this is her “low-down way” he mentionned in the second verse. Finally, one should take note that “sleeping by myself” is a very common trope in the Delta and Chicago blues.

The last verse is just as ambivalent as the fifth:

En it’s “T” for Texas, now, en it’s “T” fo’ Tennessee,
En it’s “T” for Texas, now, en it’s “T” fo’ Tennessee,
Lord bless dat woman dat put de thing on me.

The openning line is a quite frequently used formula, which suggests the mobile and uncertain life of a bluesman; it is indifferent where he goes, the fact is he’ll surely be going some day. The last line, though, brings back the other theme, the anxious hope of a fulfilled love. The “thing” Willie Brown referres to is actually a spell (just like in Screamin Jay Hopkins’ I put a spell on you). The woman’s spell is what stops him from going away and still hoping.
OK, I think that’s enough now. I hope you began hearing different the song. If you want listening to it one more time, you’ll find it on the Document Records website:

http://www.document-records.com/mp3/21663.mp3

Finally, speaking of Screamin Jay Hawkins (I probably won’t get to write to much about him)

PS Very soon hopefully I’ll write about the use of the word “blues” in a few Black journals during the 19th century. As you’ll see, this census could open some interesting insights… but i won’t spoil the surprise.

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”.
In the blues imagery, little women have a particular place in the order of being. Like brown, long tall, black jet or fat women, little women may generate extreme rejection ar attraction. I’ll write some day, soon hopefully, a post about a comical disputation that opposed Dobbie Red and Bama (two prisoners in Parchman Farm) and that states for all these woman’s blues avatars.

When describing his baby as being “taylor-made”, Willie Brown actually suggests something more. It’s not only that she’s desirable, but she might be able to bring his uncertainty to an end. It seems to me that this description is the core of the song’s significance, the element that brings togeher the two themes (the anxious love for a woman and the anxious uncertainty about his own fate).

As for the other description in the verse, she “ain’t no hand-me-down”, I suppose it isn’t so much in referrence to the woman’s virginity, as one might believe, but rather to the “taylor-made” epithete. Now I could be tempted to write about tissues as ordered structures, or about Willie Brown’s desire (that his life made sense) expressed by the means of this manufactory metaphor, but I shan’t do this (Lord, I love writing “shan’t”). It is much more likely that the source of these metaphors would have been the world Willie Brown was living in and its associated representations, the pawn-shops anf the attitudes towards clothing (just remember how much money successful bluesmen used to spent on taylor-made clothes, Stetson hats and jewelry).

I read the verse once again and I think that the metaphor is even more complex than my bare suggestions. Just like the clothes, a first-hand taylor-made woman can be a mark of the social status, a sign of being respectable. It appear’s that the song background (and intention) is the bluesman’s need to gain his place within the world.

The fourth verse gives accont of the qualities that make the woman desirable.
First of all, the woman smiles. Smiling may not seem, at a time when glamour magazins flourish, a big deal, but one should remember that bluesmen are always terrified about women who don’t smile, oversleep, have headaches and boss them around. A “blues smiling woman” is the one you can git along wid, the one that will satisfy your soul (and eventually your body, as we can see in the third line of the verse).

The word “mamlish” is really a rare one; it provoked some discussions within the blues circles and it appears it was used mainly in Alabama, but this conclusion is based only on the fact that Ed Bell, the author of the Mamlish Blues, was Alabamian.
(Ed Bell’s Blues is also known as “Mamlish Moan”, but it ain’t much of a moan, as you could see for yourselves.)
I really don’t know what’s the origin of “mamlish” (if you do know, please drop a comment), and I couldn’t give you its dictionnary “definition” (I wonder if someone can); it is used – as an adverband adjective – in a positive, even superlative way.
Finally, the expression “just good huggin’ size”;well, during the 30s and in the blues slang, “to hug” was used in referrence to the sexual intercourse (e.g. Jazz Gillum’s Keyhole Blues).

Now, if you feel like listening again to the Future Blues, you’ll find in on the Document Record website:

http://www.document-records.com/mp3/21663.mp3

Last, but not least, here’s what I’ve been playin’ all day long.

PS Coming soon: The Anatomy of Blues series: a few posts on the symbolism and imagery of anatomical parts in the pre-war blues.

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.
When Willie Brown uses this formula, he might suggest that he is an “errant soul” seeking for a place to settle down. Or the best place to settle down is a woman’s house. Looking at the Black woman as to a pillar of stabilty may be a cultural cliché, but it’s a cliché that I found in many bluesmen’s testimonials, anthropological papers or even contemporary movies about Black commnunities promoting the family idea. So let’s keep this in mind while reading the rest of the song.
The second verse consists in two formularic verses, very commun in the Delta blues; the first one is exstensively used by Son House:

De minutes seems like hours, en’ hours seems like days
De minutes seems like hours, en’ hours seems like days
En’ it seems like mah woman oughta stop her low-down way.

The theme of slow-passing time is recurrent in the blues history, and its roots are undoubtfully very deep. The Black slaves, for instance, used to sing “Go down, ole Hannah”, an invocation to the Sun, who (for he was a diety) was conjured to hasten his set, so his worshipers finally got their rest. When asked why they were singing while working, the Parchman Farm prisoners answered that singing made them feel the time was passing faster. Well, I suppose this is rather a White projection, cause White folks don’t really understand how music can be a way of life and not only a pastime.In the bare Delta blues tradition, times stops especially by night, when the bluesman thinks about his baby and the way she treats him so unkind.
When the time stops, the bluesman’s mind “gets to ramblin’” (Robert Johnson) “like a wild geese from the west” (Skip James), and he can’t “make his rest”. And this is the blues.
In a deeper sense, the feeling that the time is passing to slow is a symptom of the chronical lack of free agency. It’s a dramatical “prison blues”, a kind of “archetypal” state of mind which originated a variety of blues metaphors (“fast woman”, “easy rider”, “key to the highway”, the Jesse James imagery, you name it). Well, I think this is a very important issue and I’d be glad if you cared keeping it in mind all the way to the end of this blues adventure.
The third line of the verse makes clear what caused Willie Brown’s blues, namely the “low-down way” of his woman. This is a generic expression describing an unacceptable behavior (from a masculin point of view). A woman’s way is low-down either when sh’s flirting with the bluesman’s best friend, or when she refuses to respond to his loved in a “proper” manner.
OK, I’ma little tired right now, and feel like playing. I’ll end this first part here with the promise come up with the sequels in the next few hours. Til then, you can enjoy the Future Blues:

http://www.document-records.com/mp3/21663.mp3

All the credits for the song go to Document Records.

PS A final “word” about the symbol Jesse James, the baddest man. As you might expect, gavagai particularly enjoys this John Lee Hooker song (Bad like Jesse James).