by R. A. Lawson
55. The lyrics for “Strange Fruit” were written as a poem by Lewis Allen, a patron of the Greenwich Village interracial nightclub, Café Society, where Billie Holiday debuted the song in 1939; see Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 181-87. On the symbolic meaning of the various “abandonment blues” sung by female blues vocalists, see Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 18-19; and Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 183-84.
56. Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Hangman Blues,” transcribed in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 10; Huddie Ledbetter, “Gallis Pole,” Musicraft 227 (New York, 1939); and John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1937; repr., New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), 305.
57. Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Knopf, 1981), 502-56.
58. Allison Davis, Burleigh Gardner, and Mary Gardner, Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941; citations are to 2nd ed., Chicago: Phoenix Book, 1965), 202.
59. Lyrics transcribed in Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 32.
60. This is the traditional and oft-repeated three-line stanza made famous in W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”—the song that cemented Handy’s national recognition in 1914; see Handy, Father of the Blues, 143. See also Ben Sidran, Black Talk (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), 25-34.
61. Booker T. Laury, interview by George McDaniel, March 31, 1983, quoted in Spencer, Blues and Evil, xxv; and James Bennighof, “Some Ramblings on Robert Johnson’s Mind: Critical Analysis and Aesthetic Value in Delta Blues,” in Evans, ed., Ramblin On My Mind, 278.
62. Alan Lomax quoted in Wald, Escaping the Delta, 74. This type of field-hollerin’ was foundational in blues lyrics, most obviously in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan,” as Wald notes (76).
63. On the importance of field hollers and ring shouts in the African American oral tradition, see Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 16; Sam Floyd, “Ring Shout! Black Music, Black Literary Theory, and Black Historical Studies,” Black Music Research Journal 11 (1991): 267-89; and Alonzo Johnson and Paul Jersild, eds., “Ain’t Gonna Lay My Ligion Down”: African American Religion in the South (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996). An insightful explanation of the ring shout, combining photographs, essays, and musical transcriptions, can be found in Art Rosenbaum and Margo Newmark Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).
64. Howard Odum, “Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes,” Journal of American Folk-Lore 24 (July-September 1911): 261; Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 101; and Welding, “Rambling Johnny Shines,” 29.
65. Much of the analysis in this paragraph (regarding the “southern flavor of epistemology”) was inspired by Darden Ashbury Pyron, “Margaret Mitchell, the Kudzu Reader, and Illiteracy,” a paper given at the Citadel Conference on the South, Charleston, S.C., April 2000.
66. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 6; Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, xii. See also Alan Lomax, “Folk Song Style,” American Anthropologist 61 (December 1959): 927-54; Carl Boggs, “The Blues Tradition,” Socialist Review 8 (January-February 1978): 120; and Hale, Making Whiteness, 13-18. On the essential conservativeness of African American music, see White, American Negro Folk Songs, 26, 148-50; and Work, American Negro Songs, 12.
67. Chalmers Archer Jr., Growing Up Black in Rural Mississippi: Memories of a Family, Heritage of a Place (New York: Walker and Co., 1992), 121.
68. B. B. King quoted in Woods, Development Arrested, 144.
69. Rube Lacy quoted in Evans, Big Road Blues, 54; J. D. Short quoted in Charters, Poetry of the Blues, 12; Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, 273.
70. Eddie Boyd quoted in Samuel Charters, The Legacy of the Blues: The Art and Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen (New York: Da Capo, 1977), 160-61.
71. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 405-7.
72. Quotations in McMillen, Dark Journey, 134; William Ferris, Blues from the Delta (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1978), 19; and Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 3. Leon Litwack demonstrates that of the nearly three thousand lynchings reported from 1889 to 1918, only 19% were based on accusations of rape; Litwack concludes that many more were violent acts of social control; see James Allen, John Lewis, Leon Litwack, and Hilton Als, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 24. Some of the best scholarship on southern lynchings may be found in W. Fitzhugh Brundage, ed., Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Representative of an earlier Marxist interpretation of lynching is Arthur F. Raper, The Tragedy of Lynching (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933), but see also NAACP executive Walter White, Rope and Faggot (New York: Knopf, 1929).
73. Richard Wright Jr., 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: Rare Book Co., 1965), 69; and Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York: Dell, 1968), 261.
74. “Tech ‘Er Off, Charlie,” in Tom Terrill and Jerrold Hirsch, eds., Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 254-59, quoted in Litwack, Trouble In Mind, 5-6.
75. Columbia University historian Barbara Fields explores the relationship between African American language and American slavery and segregation, arguing that African American cultural products, such as “black English,” are generally outcomes of social separation and difference making imposed by racism; see Barbara Fields, “Origins of the New South and the Negro Question,” Journal of Southern History 67 (November 2001): 825-26.
76. Muddy Waters and Honeyboy Edwards quoted in Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2002), 22.
77. King and Ritz, Blues All Around Me, 68.
78. Rufus Thomas, interview in Richard Pearce, dir., The Road To Memphis (Vulcan Productions and Road Movies, 2003), in the PBS series The Blues.
79. King and Ritz, Blues All Around Me, 98.
80. Alger “Texas” Alexander and Lonnie Johnson, “Section Gang Blues,” Okeh 8498 (New York, 1927); “Levee Camp Moan Blues,” Okeh 8498 (New York, 1927); and “Penitentiary Moan Blues,” Okeh 8640 (New York, 1928).
81. Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 460-61; and Edet, “100 Years of Black Protest Music,” 38.
82. Bukka White quoted in Hay and Davidson, Goin’ Back to Sweet Memphis, 21.
83. David Cohn, Where I Was Born and Raised (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 276-77. See also William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son (New York: Knopf, 1941), 298-99; and Mary Ellison, Lyrical Protest: Black Music’s Struggle in America (New York: Praeger, 1989), xi. “Me and My Captain,” quoted in Lawrence Gellert, Negro Songs of Protest (New York: American Music League, 1936), 5.
84. Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 163, 179.
85. Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 68.
86. Handy, Father of the Blues, 93, 99.
87. Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit, 65; McMillen, Dark Journey, xiv; and Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 192.
88. An authoritative account of Johnson’s last days can be found in McCulloch and Pearson, Robert Johnson, 14-17.
89. Frantz Fanon, speech before the First Congress of Negro Writers and Artists, Paris, September 1956; published as “Racism and Culture,” in Frantz Fanon, Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), 37.
90. Ortiz Walker, Music: Black, White, and Blue: A Sociological Survey of the Use and Misuse of Afro-American Music (New York: Morrow, 1972), 33-34. A decade earlier Ralph Ellison asked, in response to Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: “Can a people . . . live and develop for over three hundred years simply by
reacting? Are American Negroes simply the creation of white men, or have they at least helped create themselves out of what they found around them? Men have made a way of life in caves . . . Cannot Negroes have made a life upon the horns of the white man’s dilemma?” See Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 303-17.
91. Barlow, Looking Up at Down, 6; Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, xiii.
92. See Baraka, Blues People, 153.
93. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), quotations on 12, 11, but see generally 3-20. Scholars are exploring the boundary between music and political discourse; a three-paper panel at the 2002 Conference of the American Historical Association titled “Music and Politics: Cultural Frontiers in Postwar Germany” detailed how music itself became a contested political arena. More recent efforts are being published in the subfield, such as Richard Hernandez, “Sacred Sound and Sacred Substance: Church Bells and the Auditory Culture of Russian Villages during the Bolshevik Velikii Perelom,” American Historical Review 109 (December 2004): 1475-1504.
94. Duke Ellington quoted in Ken Burns, prod. and dir., Jazz (WETA-PBS, Washington, D.C., 2001), episode 4, “The True Welcome, 1929-1935”
95. McMillen, Dark Journey, 23, 162-63; Edward Berlin, Ragtime: A Musical and Cultural History (Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2002), 32
96. Alice Moore, “Black and Evil Blues,” Paramount 12819 (Richmond, Ind., 1929); and Wright, introduction to Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, xiv-xv.
97. See Spencer, Blues and Evil, xiv-xv. A person who understood the evil blues—the spiritual world European Americans called secular—was likely to understand righteousness—what whites called sacred. See Grace Sims Holt, “Stylin’ Outta the Black Pulpit,” in Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, and Slam Dunking, 331-47.
98. Wright, introduction to Oliver, Blues Fell This Morning, xv. Paul Garon forwards a similar thesis, arguing that Christians rejected the cosmology of blues music because it was a culture that embraced the moral acceptability of evil; see Garon, Blues and the Poetic Spirit, 7-8.
99. Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 213.
100. Dolan, “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads,” 118.
101. Handy, Father of the Blues, 10.
102. Son House, “Preachin’ Blues (part one),” Paramount 13013 (Grafton, Wisc., 1930).
103. Son House, “Walking Blues,” Library of Congress recording (Lake Cormorant, Miss., 1941).
104. John Dollard, Caste and Class, 86-88. On the class differences within southern black society, see Lemann, The Promised Land, 37; Jacqueline Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880-1920 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 3; Bobby Lovett, The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930: Elites and Dilemmas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999), 131; and Tom Ward, “Class Conflict in Black New Orleans: Dr. Rivers Frederick, Ernest Wright, and the Insurance Strike of 1940,” Gulf South Historical Review 15 (Fall 1999): 35-48. On the development of paternalism and social stratification within black American religious life, see Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
105. Baraka, Blues People, 124-25. See also Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 203.
106. Dolan, “Extra! Chicago Defender Race Records Ads,” 117-18; and David Suisman, “Co-workers in the Kingdom of Culture: Black Swan Records and the Political Economy of African American Music,” Journal of American History 90 (March 2004), www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.4/suisman.html.
107. Lewis Jones, unpublished manuscript in the Lomax Archives, quoted in Wald, Escaping the Delta, 89.
108. Welding, “Ramblin’ Johnny Shines,” 29
109. Robert Johnson, “Traveling Riverside Blues,” unissued ARC DAL-400-1 (Dallas, 1937).
110. Big Joe Williams, “Black Gal, You’re Sure Lookin’ Warm,” transcribed in Samuel Charters, The Legacy of the Blues: The Art and Lives of Twelve Great Bluesmen (New York: Da Capo, 1977), 96-97.
111. J. D. Short, “She Got Jordan River in Her Hips,” Victor 23288-A (Louisville, Ky., 1931); Washboard Sam, accompanied by Big Bill Broonzy, Roosevelt Sykes, and Frank Owen, “River Hip Mama,” Bluebird B9039 (Chicago, 1934).
112. Peetie Wheatstraw, “Tennessee Peaches,” Vocalion 1552 (Chicago, 1930).
113. Ownby, American Dreams in Mississippi, 4, and chapter 6, “Goods, Migration, and the Blues, 1920s-1950s,” 110-29; King and Ritz, Blues All Around Me, 72, 137; and Charters, Legacy of the Blues, 37.
114. Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy,” Chess 1602 (Chicago, 1955).
115. Accounts of drug use among blues musicians and other poor blacks may be found throughout Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (New York: Random House, 1946).
116. Sam Chatmon, interview by the BBC in Hollandale, Miss., 1976, quoted in Giles Oakley, The Devil’s Music: A History of the Blues (New York: Taplinger, 1977), 54.
117. Lillie Mae Glover quoted in Hay and Davidson, Goin’ Back to Sweet Memphis, 34.
118. John Estes, “Diving Duck Blues,” Bluebird 7677 (Memphis, 1929).
119. Muddy Waters quoted in Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 81; Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sloppy Drunk Blues (Bring Me Another Half a Pint),” Victor 22-0021 (Chicago, 1947).
120. Tommy Johnson, “Canned Heat Blues,” Victor 38535 (Memphis, 1928).
121. Cocaine use pervaded many southern communities. Historians of Memphis estimated 80% of the city’s black labor force used the drug c. 1900; Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall, Beale Street Black and Blue: Life and Music on Black America’s Main Street (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 24. On cocaine use in the United States generally, see Joseph Spillane, “Making a Modern Drug: The Manufacture, Sale, and Control of Cocaine in the United States, 1880-1920,” in Paul Gootenberg, ed., Cocaine: Global Histories (New York: Routledge, 1999), 21-45.
122. Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 178.
123. “Take a Whiff On Me,” was a popular song among nightclub goers in the urban North as well as southern blacks at barrelhouse parties. Huddie Ledbetter’s version was transcribed in Lomax and Lomax, American Ballads and Folksongs, 187; Memphis Jug Band, “Cocaine Habit Blues,” Victor 38620 (Memphis, 1930).
124. Lucius Smith and Garvin Bushell quoted in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 213, 220.
125. W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 151.
126. Peetie Wheatstraw, “Drinking Man Blues,” Decca 7228 (Chicago, 1936). See Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 191.
127. Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Burnett), “Wang Dang Doodle,” Chess 1777 (Chicago, 1960).
128. King and Ritz, Blues All Around Me, 128-9.
129. Charles Love and Mance Lipscomb quoted in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 213.
130. James Thomas quoted in Ferris, Blues from the Delta, 102.
131. Muddy Waters quoted in Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 88.
132. Paul Oscher quoted in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 195-96.
133. Lee Kizart quoted in Ferris, Blues from the Delta, 102-3.
134. Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 5.
135. Keil, Urban Blues, 71, and Gioia, Delta Blues, 5.
136. Muddy Waters, “I’m Ready,” transcribed in Keil, Urban Blues, 71. Keil based his analysis of “antagonistic” songs on the human interaction studies of sociologist Robert Bales. In this case, the violent songs cited by Keil fit into Bales’s category twelve: behavior wherein the antagonist seeks to assert himself by belittling others. See Robert Bales, Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1950), 59.
137. “Railroad Bill,” transcribed in Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 171.
138. Lyrics transcribed in John Lowe, Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurstons Cosmic Comedy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 118.
139. “Texas” Bill Day and Billiken Johnson first recorded (jointly) “Deep Ellum Blues,” a song popular among white and black audiences, in 1929. The version here is quoted in Barlow, Looking Up at Down, 232.
140. Handy, Father of the Blues, 93.
141. Finn, The Bluesman, 211.
142. Gussow, Seems Like Murder Here, 183.
VERSE TWO
1. Bessie Smith, “St. Louis Blues,” Columbia 14064D (New York, 1925); and Chris Albertson, Bessie (New York: Stein and Day, 1972), 159, quoted in Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, 60.
2. Joe Savage quoted in Lomax, Land Where the Blues Began, 254-55.
3. Interested readers should refer to the three-volume Encyclopedia of the Great Black Migration, ed. Steven Reich (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2006).
4. On the vaudeville circuit and traveling medicine shows, see Richard Spottswood, “Country Girls, Classic Blues, and Vaudeville Voices: Women and the Blues,” in Lawrence Cohn, ed., Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 87; Wald, Escaping the Delta, 16; Abbott and Serhoff, “They Cert’ly Sound Good to Me,” in Evans, Ramblin on My Mind, 77-81; and Henry Sampson, Blacks in Blackface: A Source Book on Early Black Musical Shows (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980), 60-61. On Chicago’s Pekin Theater specifically, see Edward A. Robinson, “The Pekin: The Genesis of American Black Theater,” Black American Literature Forum 16 (Winter 1982): 136-38. Good primary sources on the vaudeville circuit include interviews with Lillie Mae Glover (Memphis Ma Rainey) and Little Laura Dukes, both vaudeville performers in their early careers, in Hay and Davidson, Goin Back to Sweet Memphis, 27-51, 157-79.
