Got the Blues » bluesmen

Peetie Wheatstraw, the High Sheriff from Hell

gavagai — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:46:51 +0000

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:

Ev’rybody wonderin’ “What’s the Peetie Wheatstraw do?”
Yee-hee-well, “What’s the Peetie Wheatstraw do?”
Cause ev’rytime you hear him, he comin’ out with somethin’ new

He makes them happy, some he make cry
Eee, makes them happy, some that he make cry
Well, now he made a-one ole lady go hang herself an die.

The scholar orthodoxy about these verses is that they represent a testimonial about the bluesmen’s habit of creating characters (e.g. Tommy & Robert Johnson, selling their souls to the Devil) and advertising their skills or sexual prowess. I won’t try to argue against this thesis, for it describes well enough a widely spread phenomenon (one shouldn’t forget the rough competition between bluesmen, the superstitions which populated the imagination of bluesmen’s audience or the wonders of the new advertising industry, which had a noticeable impact in the African American society in the first decades of the last century). What I’d like to add, though, is a remark about the musician’s self-consciousness.

Musicologists keep writing that Peetie’s playing (both of piano and guitar) was mediocre. Well, I might agree (which I don’t), but I wonder if the audience perceived it the same way. It ain’t likely that a worker who was terrorized by receiving the 304 form (the one announcing his firing) and who really missed the simple life he had left down South paid too much attention to the melodic subtleties. I mean the beat is fine, the 12-bar structure and the harmony (I-IV-V) are there, the singer’s scenic presence is unique and so are the lyrics, all you need is grab a bottle, drink it up and dance. I’d rather think that Wheatstraw’s audience was more attentive to the show than they were to the “partition”. For the blues ain’t so much about the perfect playing of an instrument, but about playing with the states of mind (the ones of the player as well as the ones of the audience).
When Peetie Wheatstraw tells he makes some folks cry, ooh-ooh-well, I really believe him. And I remember a story about Robert Johnson who made his audience crying when he played Come on in my kitchen. And this is the blues.
Now, ef you feel like cryin’, jist looky here:
Lonnie Johnson, Another night to cry

Robert Johnson, Come on in my kitchen

The Devil’s Son-in-Law

gavagai — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 08:41:08 +0000

As we all know, da Devil had a daughter. She was a Black gal, very beautiful and ready to satisfy a man’s soul. But she usta drink moonshine and whiskey all nite lon’, while lissenin’ to da Devil’s music. By en by, she got lonely, cause all da friends-girls she had had had da notion she wuz very mean en meant no good.

En she wuz alwayz sad en lonesome en she would alwayz be on her faddah’s trail (well, i mean tail), cause the only satisfaction she could git wuz his music.

En one day, when da Devil felt he couldn’t stan’ no mo’ his daughta on his tail, he thought to himself he wuz bound to git her married. En da Devil married his daughta to Peetie Wheatstraw.

Well, I’ll tell you ’bout Peetie Wheatstraw in the next post, cause one will git unlucky ef he writes dis kinna sumffins by daytime.

But until then, maybe you care listening to a few Peetie Weatstraw’s songs on Soundpedia. (PS: free registration).

Now heah’s a good friend of the Devil; hope you’ll enjoy.

Willie Brown, bluesman and friend

gavagai — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:28:03 +0000

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.
I met Willie Brown for the first time while listening to an unique performance of Son House’s Walkin’ Blues. It’s a “field record” (1946, during one of the last Southern trips of Allan Lomax) which gathered Son House (vocals, guitar), Willie Brown (guitar), Fiddlin’ Joe Martin (mandolina) and Leroy Williams (harmonica) – sample here, for I’m not allowed to share it with you. In the first instance I didn’t like Brown very much, mainly because there’s an obvious difference between his “soft” way of playing and House’s violent and expressive stroke; additionnaly, I used to think Brown was drunk at the moment – I wasn’t able to find another explanation for his (quite untasteful) hollers and respondings to Son House’s leading vocals; furthermore, Lomax reports having bought beer before recording the other William Brown (Ragged and Dirty, Mississippi Blues).
Fortunately, after having carefully listen to the songs Brown performed alone, I came to give up these first thougts, to reconsider his music and to decide to write here about him.
Willie Brown gets credit for having recorded four songs; two of them are certified (M&O Blues and the Future Blues), while the others are very disputed (Rowdy Blues, issued under the name of a misterious Kid Bailey, – who is, or isn’t, Brown himself, and a verision of Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, recorded by Lomax during the war, in 1941). I ain’t willin to say nuffin in dis debate, but I tell ya one thin: de fust two does sho soun differen.
If I was to put together all the few things I know about Willie Brown, I’d say he was a rather shy person, maybe oversensitive, comforted by liquor and friendship. He must have have an itinerant life, drifting from farm to farm, playing on sunday nights for the cotton pickers, on thursdays for himself, loving and being loved and left, fighting in the barrelhouses.
OK, enough talking for now. In the two post to come I’ll invite you to listen to Future Blues and M&O Blues and I’ll comment their lyrics. Meanwhile, feel free to listen to Robert Johnson’s take two of the Crossroads (Willie Brown mentionned in the last verse).