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Introduction
On reflection
I think I should amend my sub-heading for this 4-CD set
to “raunchy and dangerous black women’s blues”.
Many of the selections are fraught with danger - of the
terminal kind - whereas ‘raunchy’ usually conveys highly
sexual/sensual material of which examples are here
a-plenty.
I initially
got my inspiration for this collection from a programme
on BBC World Service between 0300-0400 on 19th
February. I came in mid-way through and discovered the
title/theme was ‘Women Who Are Black Like Me’. A
survey of darker-skinned women from India, Asia and also
of African Americans.
Apparently,
according to several of the ladies interviewed on this
programme, the caste system of the black US community
which was so prevalent in the first half of the 20th.
century is still just as firmly in place today. See
examples like ‘Chocolate To The Bone’, ‘Some Scream High
Yellow’ and ‘Black Woman’s Blues’ by Barbecue Bob, Bo
Weavil Jackson and Clara Smith (see CD 1) respectively,
in this early period. The darker-skinned African
Americans are generally excluded from jobs that their
lighter coloured contemporaries consistently fill - here
in 2017!
I have
selected black women, lesser known to today’s audience,
from the early blues featuring mainly a CD by each of
them. Clara Smith, Lucille Bogan, and Lil Johnson. Moanin’
Bernice Edwards, who only has 14 vocal sides available,
is supplemented by four Texas Blues sisters included to
complete CD 4; Hociel Thomas, Sippie Wallace (part of
Edwards’ ‘family’), Bessie Tucker and Victoria Spivey.
This CD set covers rural, urban and vaudeville blues
styles. CD 1/A is by ‘the Queen of the Moaners’, Clara
Smith from South Carolina.
CD 1/A -
CLARA SMITH
|
Clara Smith
featured on The Music Trail in Spartanburg
city centre. September,2015.
Pic. b y Caitlin Rimmer |
Raised in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, from the age of 8, it has
never been established if Clara Smith was actually born
within the city limits. But at any rate the slightly
earlier birth date of 1892, from the generally accepted
1894-1896 up until now, has been established (see my
forthcoming book-WIP) so the ‘Music Trail’ signpost in
Spartanburg city needs to be corrected, if not already
done so.
One of the
top 4 vaudeville blues singers along with Ma Rainey (JSP
7793) who was Clara’s main influence, Bessie Smith and
Ida Cox. The ‘Queen of the Moaners’ as she was commonly
known (and ‘Jolly Clara’!) is as good as any of them.
Only performing live gigs for black audiences, Clara
Smith was up there with Ma Rainey in the popularity
stakes from the 19-teens onwards. She hit the
travelling circuit in 1911 and known to be singing the
blues on shows from 1912. As well as the tent shows
connected with the railroad circus, by 1915 she starred
in countless theatres from New York to New Orleans as
well as the mid-west, West Coast, and other northern
cities such as Chicago; Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh; as
well as Harlem in New York City: all by way of the
railroads. Indeed, they appear in many of her blues
including ‘L. & N. Blues’ on which she declares she is
‘a ramblin’ woman with a ramblin’ mind.’- the first to
put these words on a record. In Clara’s day (she died in
1935) Harlem housed the largest black population in the
world outside the African continent. It was in the Big
Apple that she cut all 124 of her issued recordings from
June 1923 to 25th. March 1932.
Her
soubriquets ‘Queen of the Moaners’ and the ‘World’s
Champion Moaner’ were well-deserved and it was on 10th.
September in 1923 when the singer introduced ‘the moan’
to a Blues record. Although the Fisk University Jubilee
Singers had featured it
to harrowing
effect on their ‘Po’ Mo’ner Got A Home At Last’-a
traditional gospel song-as early as 10th.
February, 1911. This being the same year Clara hit the
road on travelling shows. It’s possible she had already
developed her moaning style at this time. The ‘moan’
itself goes back to before the Civil War, into the 18th.
century and beyond. Eye-witness reports from the 1780’s
by a slave-ship surgeon and a doctor illustrate the
horrendous conditions that were extant below decks
where slaves were packed together like the proverbial
sardines on the Middle Passage across the Atlantic to
American shores. Describing their songs as “melancholy
lamentations of their exile from their native country
[and] a howling
melancholy kind of noise, something expressive of
extreme anguish” .(1)
A moan by any other name which portrays some of the grim
and darkest roots of the Blues.
Clara moans
in a way that was never surpassed on a record; the term
‘moan’ here is identified with ‘hum’ in US black-speak.
Although interestingly, it appeared in poems and songs
in 16th. century England, often deemed ‘a
lament’ as well as ‘a mone’. In the early part of that
century, Thomas Wyatt penned a poem or ‘ballade/folk
poetry’ as the author supposes, called ‘My lute and I’
which paints a portrait of unrequited love and the hero
has to ‘Restrain my lust’ and ends with a verse of
despair:
Thus in mischief
I suffre grief,
For of relief
Sins I have none,
My lute and I,
Continually,
Shall us apply
To sigh and mone. (2)
The lyrics
certainly seem to foreshadow a blues in the making! The
‘black moan’ is delivered in a usually slow tempo and in
a dragging style, especially by Clara Smith. The two
final verses of Awful Moanin’ Blues [Col
A4000] run:
I got no friends, I can’t
trust men;
Everything’s in soak* an’ always broke.
There’s no place where I can get a loan;
Even no place I can call my home.
That is why you always hear me moan.
(*=her
only change of clothes are soaking in the wash tub.)
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm-mmmmmm-mmm;
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-mmmm-mmmmmm.
How my
heart aches. Soon it will break;’
I’m almost through.
What will I do, Lord;
Just to cure these ‘Awful Moanin’ Blues’.
(3)
 This, one of
the most powerful of her recordings, encapsulates the
socio-economic situation experienced by a large majority
of African Americans during the opening decades of the
20th. century, on a 78 shellac disc and also
portrays the essence of the Blues to the listener in 3
minutes and four seconds! Clara’s moaning vocal,
steeped as it is in a high degree of sensuality. There
were five other versions of this song recorded, (see
Table 1 ) four by her female contemporaries which
do not really come close to matching the awesome
artistry of Clara Smith who quite possibly got her name
‘Queen of the Moaners’ from performing this song live,
prior to her recording debut in June 1923. The fifth
was by rural blues guitarist Bo Weavil Jackson,
allegedly from the ‘Carolinas’, adapting Clara’s moaning
style, in 1926.
Her first
issued title, Every Woman’s Blues [Col A3943] had
lyrical influence to some rural blues singers from
Georgia, yet to be recorded; Charlie Lincoln, and Kokomo
Arnold. And indirectly Willie Baker (another Georgian)
as well as Memphis resident Frank Stokes. (JSP7725)
Clara moans:
Don’t never let no one
man worry your mind. (x 2)
Just keep you four an’ five, messed up all
the time.
Well, there ain’t no
love, there ain’t no getting’ along. (x 2)
My brown
treats me so mean, sometimes I don’t know right from
wrong. (4)
 12-string man
Charlie Lincoln included the 2nd. verse
above on his ‘My Wife Drove Me From My Door’ in 1927,
also on Columbia. The first verse seems to be the
precursor of blues on which the singer boasts of more
than one sexual partner. This amoral (or immoral,
depending on your outlook) approach to relationships was
to appear in the early rural blues by the mid-1920s.
Songs came out on disc such as ‘It’s A Good Thing’ by
the Beale Street Sheiks, (JSP7725) taken at a fast lick,
and Willie Baker cut a really slowed down version
inspired no doubt by the earlier performance of Ms.
Smith. This title is followed by the phrase ‘to have
more than one’ (woman/man). A spin off on this theme
appears on various blues of having a lover for every day
in the week. Each one supplying all the ‘essentials’
of life; money, cool can beer, sex, clothes, etc. As
well as the lone version by Texan Sippie Wallace on her
‘A Man For Every Day in The Week’ in 1926, (see CD 4)
the weekly requirements crop up in blues by Jim Jackson
on his ‘My Monday Woman Blues’ and many others. The
beautiful bottleneck ‘Three Women Blues’ by Blind Willie
McTell (JSP7711) is rather less demanding but still on
the same subject.!
Meanwhile,
Charlie Lincoln’s younger brother Barbecue Bob cut his
more obvious ‘Ease It To Me Blues’ in 1928. Having
first heard Clara Smith’s Ease It [Col 14202-D]
which she put out in November 1926. A smouldering
vocal as only she could deliver, this was an obviously
risqué song cloaked in the subject-omitted by Bob-of
needing money from her man. This unfortunate individual
was one of the black working men who had a regular day
job; referred to derisively by early blues singers as ‘a
monkey man’ (there were also monkey women). Clara
describes his meagre wages as his “ones an’ twos”
that is, counted in 1 or 2 dollar bills rather than
tens and twenties.
Red hot mama had a monkey
man;
She called him ‘Sugar Plum’.
He didn’t know how come.
He was just as dumb.
Every pay
day this dumb baby would collect his ones an’ twos;
His red hot mama would find her dummy an’
sing these weary blues.
Ref: Ease it here, babe. Don’t hold it so long.
Give all, babe, or don’t give me none. (5)
Then comes
the sting in the tail as she tells how she uses the
monkey man’s weekly wage to give to her outside lover or
‘back door man’. However, the singer’s erotic vocal
approach leaves no doubt as to what she is actually
singing about!
Now, it’s ashes to ashes
an’ sand to sand;
Every married woman’s got a back door
man. (6)
Clara is
feeling distinctly mean towards her husband and this
often colours her finest blues. In fact jazz man Doc
Cheatham, who sometimes supported her on a gig said c.
1921, of her shows in Bessie Smith’s home state of
Tennessee “Clara outdrew Bessie in Nashville all the
time…Because she was mean, and she sang mean. She would
give everybody hell, give the men hell, give the women
hell in her blues singing. She was a mean woman but she
was a great singer.” (7) By contrast, the late Mississippi Bluesman James ‘Sonny
Ford’ Thomas “expressed the view that Bessie
Smith…was not a blues singer at all.” (8)
Presumably thinking she was more a jazz-blues singer
like Smith’s disciple Billie Holiday.
Another
excellent example appeared in May 1926. Featuring a
fine slow-drag accompaniment with a grim, undercurrent.
This is a blues with a stark warning to all pimps who
exploited young girls and women; often referred to as
‘sweet men’ or ‘jelly beans’. The 3 pre-war songs
recording this title are all different to each other.
The other 2 being by Ma Rainey (1924) and Merline
Johnson (1938). The listener just knows that Clara
means business! Her anger shows through in her
hard-hitting vocal for the ‘honest gal’ working
excessively long hours and horrendously low wages.
Oh! These so-called sweet
an’ pretty men. Please take ‘em away. ( x 2)
All they want to do, lead some poor gal
astray.
Some are like jelly beans. So cute an’ so
sweet. ( x 2)
I carry carbolic acid for every one of
them I meet. (9)
And in the
words of the usual mythical 3rd. person,
‘Miss Sally Long’, during her ejection of yet another
mistreating man, Clara literally puts the boot in:
Folks livin’ down in
Mexico, will wonder what is wrong;
They will think the world is comin’ to an
end.
It’ll only be the end of one of my triflin’
men.
Ref: I’m gonna tear your playhouse down;
Tear it down to the ground.
Knockin’ out
windows;
Tear it down to the ground.
Kickin’ down doors;
Tear it down to the ground.
( crashing
sound effects)
Spoken: Your playhouse has done gone. (10)
But a man who
treats her right and takes care of all her needs is one
she often celebrated in her blues. Including a black
labourer loading/unloading steamboats, known as
stevedores, deckhands and usually roustabouts.
By the
beginning of the 1920s, the steamboat was losing its
dominance in US inland transportation to the burgeoning
railroad industry. The awesome ‘palaces’ the packet
boats carrying passengers and freight were virtually a
thing of the past but their place had been taken on the
river by the lowly towboat. A lot of people still
travelled by river, especially in Mississippi. Only a
few early blues or gospel recordings included this
impressive American icon in their lyrics. Clara Smith
was one singer who did and so was Lucille Bogan (see CD
2). In her Steamboat Man Blues [Col 14344-D] in
1928, Clara bragged about her ‘steamboat John’ who wears
‘overalls an’ old blue jeans’. As well as a champion
‘rouster’ he is also ‘a champion lover’. Compared to
middle class black males such as lawyers and doctors,
her man has ‘forgotten more than they-all ever known’.
The moaning trumpet and trombone played by Freddie
Jenkins and John Anderson respectively, invoke the
steamboat’s whistle in a dragging, haunting style to
match the Queen of the Moaners vocal which owes
something to the field holler. As the boat runs from
‘Cairo down to New Orleans ‘ this would probable be on
the well-known Lee Line which included one of their
boats named STACKER LEE, based in Memphis and going as
far north as Cairo, Illinois, situated in the ‘Y’ of the
confluence of the great streams: the Mississippi and the
Ohio Rivers.
An only
child, Clara Smith was fiercely independent and this is
readily apparent in her blues. In 1926, on another
sizzling moaned song-Whip It T o A Jelly [Col
14150-D]- she sings: ‘I wear my skirts up to my knees
an’ whip that jelly with who I please’ as she goes into
her famous long-drawn moan. While on Shipwrecked
Blues {Col 4077-D] in 1925, the singer illustrates
her talents as a superb drama actress as she acts out
the traditional role of a captain going down with his
sinking ship. If no help is in sight on the vast
expanse of open sea then she will leave the world “brave
an’ bold [and] goin’ down singin’ The Shipwrecked
Blues” (11)
with a young Louis Armstrong going with her all the way
playing some of the most stunning cornet on a record.
Clara
supported the N.A.A.C.P from the beginning of the
1930s-a very rare example of political interest by a
blues singer at the time. And as by 1915 she had become
a headliner on travelling shows and those in bigger
cities, including running her own Clara Smith Revue, she
acquired a lot of money which she invested in real
estate, with 2 substantial properties in Macon, Georgia,
where she was extremely popular, and probably at least 2
more in New York City. As well as her powerful voice,
it was her lighter and more humorous side that made
these shows so successful and included ‘womanly advice’
talks to all the black women in the audience, spiced
with original jokes and sayings.
On her
Jelly, Look What You Done Done [Col 14319-D] Clara’s
declamatory vocal in heart-felt criticism of sexual and
incestual lust, inspires an unidentified alto player, to
reach up to the singer’s high, musical plane; making
this the definitive version.
She was
bi-sexual (quite normal in early women singers) and
included a brief if traumatic affair with a young
teenaged Josephine Baker, a few years before the dancer
left for France to become an international star.
I dunno where
Clara got her blues, but when she moaned ‘em-they stayed
good an’ moaned!
Notes – CD 1
1.
Hogg P. p.24. (‘Slavery The African American
Experience’)
2. Awful
Moanin’ Blues
3. Davies
R.T. p.p. 294-295. (“Medieval English Lyrics”)
4. Every
Woman’s Blues
5. Ease
It
6. Ibid.
[14341-3]
7. Baker
J-C and C.Chase. p.43. ((‘Josephine The Hungry Heart’)
8. Eagle B.
& E.S. LeBlanc p.43. (Josephine The Hungry Heart)
9. Jelly
Bean Blues
10. I’m Gonna
Tear Your Playhouse Down.
11. Shipwrecked Blues
CD
2/B - LUCILLE BOGAN
Lucille Bogan
(nee Anderson) was born in Alabama in 1897) “and the
family were living in Birmingham in 1900,but her parents
and all her elder siblings were natives of Mississippi”(1)
near Amory, Mississippi but her family soon moved to a
suburb-probably Fairfield-of Birmingham, Alabama. (2)
Like Clara Smith (CD 1) she made her 1st.
recordings in June 1923, as a vaudeville blues singer.
Unlike Clara, she did not have to go north to New York
City to do this. OKeh Records travelled south to
Atlanta in Georgia for her very first session. She cut
‘The Pawn Shop Blues’ which was backed by the initial
title by another female singer, Fanny Goosby. These
are seen in the history of recorded blues as the first
‘field recordings’ or sessions cut in the South.
Interestingly, OKeh was part and parcel of the major
company-Columbia- and of course had initially recorded
Clara Smith on 31st. May 1923 but not issued
these sides. They finally surfaced in “mid or late
June” ( 3)
While Lucille Bogan/Fanny Goosby’s waxing is quoted
as appearing in “early June.” (4)
There is a distinct possibility that both Ms. Bogan and
Ms. Smith were at the same session in June 1923! (one
for Bob Eagle’s attention/comments).
 In any event
Lucille’s next session later the same month featured 4
issued sides and still in the vaudeville blues vein.
The only change being the piano accompaniment, switching
from Eddie Heywood to Henry Callens. Unfortunately, the
inferior recording quality (all-acoustic with horns)
gave Lucille’s vocals a slightly shrill and ‘far-away’
sound which did not do her justice. However, by 1927
and the introduction of electrical recordings the
singer’s voice naturally deepened to the rich timbre we
know for all of her remaining sides up to 1935 and
included on this CD.
In c. March
1927 Lucille switched to Paramount remaining with the
label until the end of that year. At her 2nd.
session c. June, she cut six sides, three of which
included a fine Kind Stella Blues [Para 12504]
which includes the title of this CD set. Backed by some
stabbing barrelhouse piano by Will Ezell, she sings a
song which Charlie Lincoln (again!) was to adapt for his
‘Gamblin’ Charley’ in the following year of 1928.
Kind Stella was a good girl, known to be a good man’s
friend. (x 2)
She take money from her husband give it
to her gamblin’ man. (5)
Whereas Clara
Smith, though a fiercely independent woman and a ‘mean’
blues singer, generally aspired to a life of stability
and respectability-Lucille Bogan was often living
outside the law; a denizen of the southern urban
jungle. Her blues were much more rougher as she often
sang of being a prostitute as well as a bootlegger of
illicit liquor. Her Struttin’ My Stuff [Br
7193] from 1930 is probably an autobiographical brag
about her prowess with sex and making booze!
Every time the police see
me comin’ they want to arrest po’ me;
Say, I’m drunk an’ disorderly n’ rowdy as
I can be.
Ref: ‘Cos I’m struttin’my stuff;
I’m struttin’ my stuff.
I’m struttin’ my stuff, struttin’ it in
the rough.
Now, some
pays a dollar, some pays a dime;
Just to see me strut this stuff of mine.
Ref: I’m struttin’, etc
I’m a big
fat woman with the meat shakin’ on my bone;
Every time I shimmy a skinny woman lose
her home.
Ref: ‘Cos I’m struttin’, etc. (6)
Prostitution
is the theme of several other sides here, such as New
Way Blues [Br 7051] and Payroll Blues [Br
7051] in 1928 both backed by Tampa Red and Cow Cow
Davenport; Ms. Bogan’s famous ‘prostitutes’ moan’
They Ain’t Walking No More [ Br 7163] from 1930;
most infamous of all of course being her raunchy version
of Shave ‘Em Dry [ARC unissued] on 19th.
July 1933; and in 1935 Barbecue Bess [Ba 33475]
and Stew Meat Blues [Ba 33448].
The latter
title has an interesting ‘micro-view’ as its background
involving a steamboat. Back in the later 1900s, white,
New Orleans trumpet player, Wingy Manone, (b.1904)
recalled that as a boy “I saw a lot of funny things
up on the levee. Whenever a packet boat was going up
the river all the colored stevedores had to tell their
sweet mamas good-by. [sic]…at
the door of every shack a boy would be saying that
farewell to his gal. Some of the boys would be trying
to get some last-minute lovin’ for free. But those gals
were too smart for ‘em. They knew these boys would
probably go on up the river and forget all about them.
So you’d hear a boy sweet-talkin’ his head off. But,
man, he’s laying the wrong kind of jive on that gal. She
don’t go for it, atall.
[sic] You hear
her tell him, ‘Get gone up that river, tote [carry] that sack, the lovin’’ll be here when the boat gets
back’.” (7)
The above
‘sweet mamas’ were generally prostitutes and raucous
singer Lucille Bogan was almost certainly one, too, as
well as a bootlegger with gangster connections in the
black Birmingham underworld. On Stew Meat Blues
accompanied by delicious, rollicking piano by Walter
Roland, she describes the scenario recalled by Wingy
Manone.
My man say I had
something look like new;
He wanted me to credit him with some of
my stew.
Said, he’s goin’ up the river to sell his
sack;
He could pay me for my stuff when the
boat get back.
Now, you can go on up the river, man, an’ sell your
sack;
You can pay me for my stew when the boat
get back.
I got good stew an’ it’s got to be sold;
The price ain’t high, I wanna get you
told.
Go on up the river, etc. (8)
Having once
been stung by a customer (or ‘trick’) for her services
up front, she firmly states ‘it’s cash today an’ credit
tomorrow’. The boy(s) was probably a small-time farmer
who would take any opportunity to work on a steamboat in
a much more lucrative job as a stevedore or roustabout,
a ‘semi-skilled’ steamboat labourer. He would take
along a lone bale or sack of cotton to sell at which
ever landing the boat stopped at. While Wingy Manone’s
‘colored boys’ would have worked on the Mississippi
River, Lucille Bogan’s tricks would find the Tombigbee
or Warrior Rivers in Alabama more accessible and the
same scenario would be re-enacted there.
Lucille Bogan
reveals her most rowdy ways, with some wicked piano from
Charles Avery, on 2 of her blues about illicit, hard
liquor, as a bootlegger who makes it and drinks it-to
excess! Her Sloppy Drunk Blues [Br 7210] was to
become something of a blues standard as successful
singers such as Leroy Carr, Bumble Bee Slim, Walter
Davis (as ‘Sloppy Drunk Again’), Sonny Boy Williamson
and Chicago’s post-war singer/guitarist Jimmy Rodgers,
all made recorded versions.
I’d rather be sloppy
drunk than anything I know. (x 2)
An’ another half-a-pint will see me go.
I’d rather
be sloppy drunk sittin’ in the can. [jail] (x 2)
Than to be at home rollin’ with my man.
Mmmmmm-mmmm. Bring me another two-bit pint. (x 2)
‘Cos I got my habits on, I’m gonna wreck
this joint. (9)
At the same
session, in 1930, she extended her anti-establishment
stance in Whisky Selling Woman [Br 7145] to
include a whole town with whisky stills on every street
and no police are allowed ‘for fifteen miles around’.
If I had a thousand
dollars, judge, I’d taken my way;
If I had a thousand dollars, judge, I’d taken my
way. Heyy-hey!
And I would make this whole town sloppy drunk one
day. (10)
Lucille’s
sheer exuberance for living the ‘fast life’ also appears
on 2 sides made in 1933. On her Baking Powder Blues
[Ba 33509] she shouts encouragement to Walter Roland
interspersed with the odd verse here and there. ‘Play
them things’, that is play the blues. And Walter
responds with raw, boogie-style piano. She offers him a
good sum of money to come and play at her place where
she is holding a big crap game.
Spoken: Uuhh! Beat ‘em,
boy. Beat ‘em. Beat ‘em down to the bricks.
Vocal: Ah! Good mornin’
by the risin’ sun.;
Didn’t
have no whiskey, I got to find me some.
Spoken: Boy! Play them
things
Aah! Play ‘em a year an’ a day, papa.
Wanna hear the ‘Baking Powder Blues’.
Owww! Oww!
Boy, shoot them dice, shoot ‘em.
Got to gamble to win me some dough.
Spoken: Here, boy.
Here’s five dollars.
Here’s
another five.
Where you from. What’s your name.
You the man all the womens like.
I’m from the Black Belt. If you do
alright we might carry you back there, too.
Spoken: Play them blues.
Don’t play ‘em so slow. ‘Cos I’m gonna give you money
an’ I’m gon’ give it
to you sure. (11)
And on
Hungry Man’s Scuffle [Vo 25015] she pursues some
jiving dialogue with Sonny Scott (a guitarist who played
with Roland) sans instrument who on Lucille’s request
for the ‘buck an’ wing’ (an old black dance from
minstrelsy days in the earlier 19th. century)
does a dance in the studio! Recorded as ‘The Jolly
Jivers’.
L.B.(spoken): What you do
that for. Womens or for money.
S.S.(spoken): I don’t do
it just because I can. I do this to keep from starvin’.
(12)
However,
Lucille Bogan covered other themes as well. She
included a reference to hoodoo (13)
on her Jim Tampa Blues [Para 12504] where she can
see Jim ‘five miles down the road’, with ironic comments
from Papa Charlie Jackson (JSP77184) who played some
forceful banjo in the break. She also envisaged a time
without men, claiming the wash woman would still have
money coming in. Indeed, she describes a fairly
dismissive attitude towards men generally.
All the women singin’
blues, till the mens they feel so bad. (x 2)
The blues is something I ain’t ever had.
Comin’ a
time, women ain’t gonna need no men. (x 2)
Just like the wash tub, money will come
rollin’ in.
Men is
like street cars, runnin’ every day. (x 2)
Miss one now, get another ‘un right away.
(14)
The singer
also invokes a Clara Smith line from Every Woman
Blues (CD 1) “Just get you four or five good men,
woman, an’ do the best you can.” (15)
And on at
least 2 of her blues she finds a lasting love. Mean
Twister [Ba33059] tells tragically of one of the
many tornados on the Eastern Seaboard as she sings of
losing her lover, fruitlessly searching the scattered
ashes all around and not finding his body. Shaking her
fist as she berates God for taking him away. Equally
moving is I Hate That Train Called The M. & O.
[A.R.C.6-02-64]. Where she accuses the Mobile & Ohio
RR. of taking the man she really loves away. I include
part-text of my ‘Railroadin’ Some’ with Walter Roland’s
poignant lead guitar complementing Lucille’s majestic
vocal.
 (16)
More smokin’
sensual/sexual symbolism occurs on Lucille’s cover of a
Charlie McFadden title Groceries On The Shelf
[Ba32904] on which she features a Piggly Wiggly store
–the first supermarket in the South, opening at Memphis
in 1915. And her ‘disguised’ smouldering vocals about
another new dance, in 1930, the Georgia Grind; in much
the same way as Clara Smith introduced her Whip It To
A Jelly (CD 1) some 4 years earlier.
And in her
penultimate session on 7th. March 1935, she
cut one of only 2 pre-war blues about lesbianism. The
first one was ‘Prove It On Me Blues’ by Ma Rainey in
1928. Often referred to as ‘bull-dikers’ (B.D.) Lucille
paints a not-too sympathetic tolerance for the ‘male’ of
a lesbian couple on B.D.Woman’s Blues [ARC
5-12-58] while retaining a begrudging admiration for
their independence, backed by some good-rockin’ piano
from Walter Roland.
B.D. women you sure can’t
understand. (x 2)
They got a head like a switch engine an’
they walk just like a natural man.
B.D.
women. B.D. women, you know they sure is rough. (x 2)
They are drinkin’ up plenty of whiskey
an’ they sure will strut their stuff. (17)
A switch engine or goat (a shunting engine that
operates in a freight yard. Pic. taken, in 1935
in Louisville Kentucky. The same year Lucille cut
B.D. Woman’s Blues.
pic. p.54. ‘Louisville
& Nashville –Steam Locomotives.’ Richard EPrince.
[Indiana University Press. Bloomington & Indianapolis]
rev. ed. 1968. Rep. 2000.
A male
vaudeville singer, Hound Head Henry,had used the switch
engine as a sexual symbol on his ‘Freight Train Special’
in 1928. Like his pianist, Cow Cow Davenport, he may
have also been from Alabama, and Lucille may well have
seen them performing the song live.
Notes-CD 2
1. Tuuk A.
van der p.35. (The New Paramount Book Of The Blues)
2. Haymes
M. see p.p.115-116.
3. Godrich
R.M.W. J.Godrich. H.Rye. p.813.
4.
Ibid. p.87.
5.
Kind Stella
Blues
6. Sruttin’
My
Stuff
7. Manone
W. & P. Vandervoort II p.26.
8. Stew
Meat
Blues
9. Sloppy
Drunk Blues
10.
Whisky Selling
Woman
11.
Baking Powder
Blues
12.
Hungry Man’s
Scuffle
13.
Haymes M. (and see Clara Smith & hoodoo links:
p.p.140-144. ‘Yes! I Sold My Soul To The Devil, Too!’
From ‘Frog Blues & Jazz Annual No.4.’ Paul Swinton (Ed.)
[Frog Records Limited. Fleet, Hants] 2015.
14. Women
Won’t Need No Men
15. Ibid.
16. Haymes. Ibid.
p.116.
17. B.D.
Woman’s Blues
CD 3/C - LIL
JOHNSON
Considering
she was more prolific on record than Lucille Bogan and
probably sold more actual discs, Lil Johnson remains an
almost total biographical blank. There does not even
seem to be a publicity pic. or any reference to any live
shows, in the likes of a black newspaper such as ‘The
Chicago Defender’: “there does not seem to be a
single advertisement… for an appearance by Lil Johnson
at any time during her recording career”. (1)
Rye does not refer to any other popular black papers
such as ‘The New York Age’ (NYA). Or ‘The Baltimore
African American’ (BAA). So possibly some results might
be in their pages.
This singer
cut 67 sides that have survived into the 21st.
century-plus a lone post-war one. Some of these were
not issued during her recording career. As Rye put it:
“Lil Johnson was a big-voiced, exuberant singer of
blues, hokum and vaudeville songs; who in an eight-year
career recorded more than sixty songs, and that is very
nearly all that is known about her.” (2)
She seems to have suddenly appeared in Chicago in the
late 1920s!
Lil Johnson
started recording in 1929, some 6 years after both Clara
Smith and Lucille Bogan, but out-lasted them on wax by a
good decade and a half. She seemed more explorative
vocally at this stage (but always innovative with
lyrics) using a falsetto solo on two of her initial cuts
in the studio. Minor Blues [Vo un-issued] and
Never Let Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand Do
[Vo 1299] A similar solo was used by rural singers
mainly from Georgia such as Barbecue Bob and Curly
Weaver.
Minor
Blues is instructive as to why a blues singer would
use a minor key as well as featuring a rare, early
appearance by pianist Montana Taylor.
I sing these blues in a
minor key;
Everybody just tryin’ to back-bite me.
I love my man better than I do myself;
Now, he‘s lovin’ somebody else.
That’s why I sing these, these ‘Minor Blues’.
I sing
these blues in a low-down key;
To let you know how he mis-treated me.(3)
Lil Johnson
recorded 9 sides (of which 5 were un-issued at the time)
in 1929 and then had to wait some 5
½ years before she
returned to the studio. She went on to have a
commercially successful run for a further 2 ½ years
cutting some 50 issued titles and 13 of her un-issued
material eventually appeared on the Document label.
(CD’s). But as Howard Rye puzzles, why was this the
case. The only explanation I can offer is that Lil
Johnson lived outside the law a lot of the time. On
Vocalion 1299, she sings ‘Me an’ my girl friend went out
for a little run’ which is most likely for a delivery of
illicit booze, but she told Lil’s man about it. Her next
verse ‘make me a pint of whiskey an’ a bottle of beer’
would seem to support the reason for their ‘run’. Even
though Prohibition had been repealed in 1933, many
blacks continued to deal in moonshine as one of the main
sources of income.
It was the
latter that Lil provided, along with Southern food like
fried chicken and red beans and rice, to the customers
at her house rent party, charging a small entrance fee
and also adding to the blues entertainment. The
rollicking tempo supplied by Tampa Red’s bottleneck
guitar and the re-appearance of excellent pianist
Charles Avery. Between the three of them they give what
must have been a pretty accurate idea of the atmosphere
generated at such a house rent party.
[vo.] My house
rent’s due, my gas bill run up to ten; [dollars] (x 2)
I wouldn’t have no lights but the light
man couldn’t get in.
[spoken] I got everything
from soda water to wine.
This is Miss Lil Johnson, Lord. Someone buy the piano
man a drink.
Don’t forget the landlady. (4)
Maybe Ms.
Johnson, I suggest, could have run foul of the law in a
more serious way, after 1929 which landed her a longer
sentence of five years or so; possibly on a homicide
rap.
With regard
to her southern roots, Alabama is a possibility. At
least 3 references appear in her recordings. On
Anybody Want To Buy My Cabbage [Ch 50002] she
mentions Birmingham which does not appear in the other
versions by Maggie Jones (1924), Mildred Austin (1928)
or indeed the L. of C. group of young women prisoners
in Parchman Farm (1939). The bouncy piano is probably
by Dot Rice. On her New Shave ‘Em Dry [Vo 03428]
Lil directs prospective customers to 18th.
Street in Birmingham which was particularly notorious in
the South for its brothels, shady jook joints and
violent gambling dens. Up there along with Beale Street
and Decatur Street in Memphis and Atlanta,
respectively. While her praise song to Joe Louis- ‘the
Brown Bomber’- mentions the state of Alabama itself on
‘Winner Joe (The Knock-Out King)’ in 1936.
I also detect
more than a nod to Lucille Bogan who was of course from
Alabama. Lil Johnson’s Shake Man Blues [Ch
50052] in 1935, sits easily in both singer’s approach
and style.
I’ve got a man, he is
actually my size. (x 2)
H trembles in the middle an’ shakes on
every side. (5)
The same
comments apply to Lil’s fine version of the traditional
New Orleans-based Bucket’s Got A Hole In It [Vo
03666] with heavy back-beat from an unidentified drummer
and rocking clarinet and piano. Washboard Sam, a major
early Chicago blues man was to cover this just over a
year later. Ms. Johnson includes a reference to Lucille
Bogan’s They Ain’t Walking No More (CD 2) while
warning other prostitutes about the patrolling Vice
Squad, as she re-locates this song to Chicago.
When you
walkin’ down 31st. Street you had better look
around;
‘Cos
the Vice Squad is on their beat an’ you’ll be
jailhouse-bound.
I been
standin’ on the corner, but everything is so slow;
I could not make no money, tricks ain’t
walkin’ no more. (6)
Indeed, Lil
Johnson seem to have take it on herself to continue
Lucille Bogan’s hard-hitting approach with
sexual/sensual material.
The New
Orleans connection continues as she delivers a take of
the song that seems to have evolved from Bucket’s
in the shape of Keep On Knocking [BB B6112]which
20 years later became a rock ‘n roll hit for Little
Richard. Singing to the poor cheated woman outside her
flat, she says “I got your daddy.” (7)
With a sparkling, driving piano by Black Bob, possible
Big Bill guitar, and unknown slapping double bass, Lil
adds some different verses and wry comments:
Peep over the transom but
you can’t come in. (x 3)
I
guess you better let me be.
Shake my door knob
but you can’t come in. (x 3)
I
guess you better let me be.
Spoken: Knock, knock,
knock. You can’t come in here….I know you wanna come in.
I’m so sure you
can’t come in, but I ain’t even bothered.
(8)
One of the
finest versions of this song along with bottleneck
guitarist Kokomo Arnold’s ‘Busy Bootin’ some 3 months
earlier. Flipside of this no. has same rockin’ tempo on
the potentially sad I Lost My Baby [BB B6112].
But Lil doesn’t sound too phased as she sings with more
than a hint of defiance and invites “I say
some sweet man come up an’ see me some time.” (9)
borrowing a leaf out of Mae West’s songbook. This
actress crops up again on That Bonus Done Gone Thru’
[ARC Un-issued], a gentle dig at the US government
dragging their feet when paying out W.W.I payments to
veterans, in 1936! And the gals are there to help ‘em
spend it!
Come on girls. Yeah!
Ain’t you goin’ downtown. Yeah!
What you gonna buy. A new evening gown.
Ohhh! Ohhh! Ohh! Ohh! Listen to my talk;
Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Just watch this Mae
West walk.
‘Cos that bonus done gone thru’. (10)
Just like
Clara Smith, Lil Johnson could be mean to both women and
men in her blues. Taken from a song she had cut earlier
‘Rock That Thing’ in 1929, she is merciless to the
impotent man on her classic Press My Button [Vo
03199] from 1936.
Now, tell me daddy what
it’s all about;
Tryin’ to fit your spark plug an’ it’s
all worn out.
Ref: I can’t use that thing;
That ding-a-ling.
I been pressin’ your button an’ your bell
won’t wring.
Hear my
baby all out of breath;
Been workin’ all night an’ ain’t done
nothin’ yet.
Ref: What’s wrong with that thing; etc. (11)
On her brash
If You Can Dish It(I Can Take It) [ARC 6-03-56]
Lil says to her lover “you’se just a cream puff”
(12) which
soon became a song in its own right, as she sings “you
can shake your body but you just can’t move your tail.
You just a cream puff an’ ain’t no good at all” (13)
with some fine trumpet by Lee Collins. I’ll Take You
To The Cleaners [Vo un-issued] threatens serious
violence:
I’ll take you to
the cleaners. You know I’ll slit your knee;
Oh! You try to be cute but that don’t
work with me.
(14)
While, as did
Lucille Bogan, Ms. Johnson resorts to hoodoo when
talking to her friend who was trying to take her man. “I’ll
sprinkle goofer dust all around your door.” (15)
Otherwise
it’s unashamed and joyous sexuality by Lil Johnson, on
her great My Stove’s In Good Condition [Vo
03251], and in other sides she loves her meat balls, is
wild about hot nuts, and really digs ‘Sam the Hot Dog
Man’. She’s ‘the hottest gal in town’ but even for Lil
Johnson, sometimes it’s too much sex! As she sings of
losing ‘her’ virginity. “If you want to twirl some
more you’ll have to twirl it yourself”. (16)
She includes a version of Take Your Finger Off It (with
an aggressive drum solo) popularised earlier by
the Memphis Jug Band and Big Bill Broonzy.
Her My
Baby Squeeze Me [Vo un-issued] gets as near single
entendre as you like and even Vocalion must have been
getting nervous about a lot of Lil Johnson’s material;
in any event both takes of this song remained un-issued
until the later 20th. century.
Just sit me up an’ sit me
on your knee;
‘Cos I feel so ‘mmmm’ when you squeeze
me.
He’s so
slippery. He’s so slimery [sic]
an’ just like grease. (17)
Lil also
includes verses from the infamous ‘Boy In The Boat’
often attributed to lesbians. (See
p.p. 203-204 for more on this song in Screening The
Blues Paul Oliver. Cassell. London] 1968. And check
later reprint, on the internet) and “come
an’ get it while it’s hot…I’ve got lots of
customers comin’ from miles around”
(18)
she sings on Come And Get It [Vo 3530]
from the same session.
Other aspects
of the Blues are reflected in this singer’s ‘Snake In
The Grass’ (not included here) which could be partly
autobiographical. With references to her sister, her
mother who is dead, and her father is ‘drinkin’ in his
gin’. And her ‘So Long I’m Gone’ is possibly a cover of
a Clara Smith title from 9 years earlier ‘So Long’ which
remains an un-issued Columbia recording.
Her Down
At The Old Village Store [Vo 03941] is a gentle dig
at the black religious community, addressing her “Bretherin’
an’ Sisterin’…turn the lights down low…an’ leave our
sins on the floor…I can see my sins, I can see them win.”.
(19)
Accompanied by a rock steady, up-tempo rhythm and neat
guitar picking by Big Bill, as well as some sarcastic
shouts of ‘hallelujah’ from an unidentified male in the
studio, which maybe Bill himself. Washboard Sam was to
do his rockin’ version a few months later in 1938.
Lil Johnson
is to be regarded as a major player in the 1930s blues
scene and up there with Georgia White and Peetie
Wheatstraw. Where did you come from, Lil, and where did
you go!
Notes - CD 3
1. Rye
Howard Notes to Lil JohnsonVol.1 [Document
DOCD-5307.] 2007. 1st issued 1994.
2. Ibid.
3. Minor
Blues
4. House
Rent Scuffle
5. Shake
Man Blues
6. Bucket’s
Got A Hole In It
7. Keep On
Knocking
8. Ibid.
9. I Lost
My Baby
10. That
Bonus Done Gone Thru’
11. Press My
Button(Ring My Bell)
12. If You
Can Dish It(I Can Take It)
13. You’re
Just A Cream Puff(You Can’t Take It)
14. I’ll
Take You To The Cleaners
15. Goofer
Dust Swing
16. You
Stole My Cherry
17. My Baby
(Squeeze Me Again) -Tk.1
18. Come And
Get It
19. Down At
The Old Village Store
CD 4/D - MOANIN’
BERNICE EDWARDS & FOUR TEXAS BLUES SISTERS
Until 2013,
there were only a few details concerning Bernice
Edwards, an excellent Blues singer and pianist. In that
year an excellent essay by Alex van der Tuuk appeared in
print. The first pic. of this singer (reproduced here
with permission) is also featured. (1)
This remained the definitive article until 2017 when
Alex published his essential book ‘The New Paramount
Book Of The Blues’. This has an updated account under
her entry. (p.p.105-109) While there is some
repetition, I have drawn on the latter for these notes.
Ms. Edwards
is quite likely the youngest singer on this JSP set;
allowing we have no birth date for Lil Johnson. (CD 3)
Following an interview with the late Mack McCormick,
Texas blues collector/historian, on 2nd. July
1912, the author reveals she was born in c. 1908 in
Waller County, in East Texas. Although in 2013 her
birthplace was given as “probably Katy, Fort Bend
County, 1907-Hermann Hospital, Houston, February 26,
1969.” (date she died) (2)
However, it is reported that Bernice “On March 14,
1968, [and] Fred Chatman…remarried in Fort Bend
County.” (3)
Earlier
reports had already established the ‘adoption’ by the
important piano blues/singers named Thomas. As Alex
notes: “By 1911 the [Edwards] family had
moved to their own home at 3110 Gillespie Street, where
they remained until 1918.” (4)
Only a short distance away “lived George and Fannie
Thomas and their large family.”. (5)
This was in Houston, Texas. They included Sippie
Wallace and Hersal Thomas (younger sister and brother)
as well as George’s daughter Hociel Thomas. All of
whom, apart from George, feature on this CD.
The earliest
reference to Moanin’ Bernice Edwards seems to be just
that, her name back in 1969 when Paul Oliver included it
in his ‘The Story of The Blues’. (google for prob.
reprint) Some 8 years later, he had some of the first
details of the artist when he noted that after the
Thomas family moved north to Chicago, “Bernice
Edwards alone maintained the Thomas tradition. [in
Texas] She wasn’t a blood relative but she was, in
Sippie’s words, ‘one of the family’…she had grown up
with the youngest Thomas children including Hociel, and
it was from them that she learned to sing and play the
blues”. (6)
Along with more details of her recordings and
accompanists, this was reproduced in ‘Blues Off The
Record’ in 1984. (see bib.) Oliver noted the
influences of her vocals by “that of Texas Alexander
in her penchant for slow tempo and heavy moaning.” (7)
And ten years later, David Evans pointed out that her
Moaning Blues [Para 12620] “may have been
influenced by the vaudeville style of Clara Smith.”
(8) Indeed,
most of Bernice’s vocal output could be thus described.
Mmmmm-mmmm. Mmm-mmm.
Spoken: I’m a-gonn moan this mornin’.
‘Cos I got it bold.
Vocal: I moaned to you like a sinner.
An’ it don’t seem to do no good. (x 2)
You are cruel-hearted , papa.
Your heart must be made of wood.
I moan in the
mornin’. I moan
late at night. ( x 2)
It’s all because you know you
ain’t treatin’ me right.(9)
She then goes
into a long moaned verse-Clara would have been proud
of!
Moanin’ Bernice Edwards c,1928-aged between 19 and 20
years old. Pic from Paul Swinton.
George W.
Thomas Jr. “a composer and music publisher” (10)
was the earliest to record, albeit under the name ‘Clay
Custer’, in February 1923 with an instrumental ‘The
Rocks’. “It has been widely accepted that
this is a pseudonym for the composer of ‘The Rocks’,
George Thomas, but there seems to be no conclusive
evidence for this”. (11)
Be that as it
may, Thomas includes the initial example of boogie piano
on a record, if only a brief excerpt. He had already
performed the ‘first’ boogie bass runs during a show in
1911, according to an awestruck, teenaged Clarence
Williams well-known future black
promoter/pianist/composer, who accompanied several of
the major vaudeville blues singers as well as running
his own jazz outfit-the Clarence Williams Blue Five. “Clarence
reported in later years that he heard George Thomas’s
boogie bass in Houston as early as 1911.” (12)
Although the
‘heavy moaning’ style attributed to Bernice Edwards and
readily apparent on her Moaning Blues, became the
‘norm’ for this singer; her voice was a bit higher on
her first 2 sides. This had deepened by her next cut
Mean Man Blues [Para 12633]
Now, it’s
funny to you, to see me shedding tears. (x 2)
But it’s all coming back to you if it be
a 1,000 years. (13)
She seems to
be plagued with these mean men but on the flipside, her
Long Tall Mama [Para 12633] gets one of them
told, hammering him with the equality ticket!
You don’t want no one
woman. You don’t do nothin’ but run around.
All you crave is a gang
of women just like a Georgia hound.
I’m gonna
get just like you, papa. I’m gon’ get me five or six
men;
I’m gonna get just like you, papa. Gonna
get me five or six men.
An’ if that won’t do, I’m goin’ to get me
eight or ten.
‘Cos I’m a
long tall mama. Do just what I wanna do;
I’m a long tall mama. I can do just what
I wanna do.
I have thinks to be a mistreater, baby,
just like you. (14)
Bernice
playing some of her hardest hitting piano, possibly
fired by some personal anger, especially in her mean
right hand. Ironically, the ‘eight or ten’ option would
be reflected in her life style. Like Lucille Bogan and
probably Lil Johnson, she was a prostitute, singing her
blues ‘between tricks’ in the brothel. When the
Paramount sales and recording manager, Arthur Laibly,
found her “she was working in a brothel ‘turning
tricks’, which she claimed Elzadie Robinson [another
fine recorded blues singer] had also done. As well
as entertaining clients, she sang and played the
piano,.” (15)
After her initial sessions, Laibly “apparently
sent her copies of her issued records, which gave her an
advantage over the other girls. When she sang and played
the piano, men would flock around her, and after she had
finished a song, she would say, ‘I have a record’ By
selling them, she made fifty percent more money than the
other girls.” (16).
A song she
would probably have included was one of the barrelhouse
‘test pieces’ (that also fitted into the brothel
atmosphere) which included ‘The 44’s’, ‘The Fives’, and
‘Here I Come With My Dirty Duckins On’ (rarely recorded
in early blues). The latter, Bernice cut as Hard
Hustling Blues [Para 12766]. Duckins being a a
common style of overalls at the time. The scenario is
that a new piano player turns up at a barrelhouse to
challenge the resident musician-i.e. a cutting contest.
As these titles were very familiar to the black audience
the winner was judged on the reception they received.
The loser was often unceremoniously thrown out on to the
dusty or muddy street. Some would wade back in wielding
a gun or knife to wreak their revenge!
Like the
other singers included here, Bernice would boast of her
superior sexuality over other women and brashly offer
any disappointed clients an item of popular jewellery in
the blues world.
Some women are
greenhorns, they don’t know how to shake that thing;
Some women are greenhorns, don’t know how
to shake that thing.
But men, if I don’t make you like it,
I’ll make you a present of a diamond ring.
‘Cos I’m a high-powered mama an’ I really
takes my time. (x 2)
I want you greenhorns to come see me an’
learn this ‘Steady Grind’. (17)
The last line
may have been a nod to Lucille Bogan and her My
Georgia Grind (CD 2). And as with all these singers
a strong sense of independence lies at the heart of this
blues.
Born To
Die Blues [Para 12741] includes lines previously
featured by Clara Smith and had become a floating verse
with other women singers. ‘Women all cryin’ murder. I
ain’t raised my hand.’. Also adapted by male singers
such as Texas Alexander. But she draws a red line, with
more than a tadge of irony, as to how far she will go to
please a man!
You must want your mama
to lay down an’ die for you;
Mmmmmm. Want your mama to lay down an’
die for you.
Layin’ down is alright, daddy, but dyin’
will never do. (18)
Bernice also
sings about hoodoo, including the well-known line ‘I
believe my man’s got a black cat bone’, on Two-Way
Mind Blues [Para 12713] and has a guitar added who
B. & G.R. noted is possibly Ramblin’ Thomas. But to
these ears is more likely to be his younger brother
Jesse, who went on to record in the post-war era.
On two of her
only sides to survive from 1935, which were recorded in
her home state, she included the popular animal
symbolism as in Bantam Rooster Blues [Vo 03036]
which is not the Charley Patton number. The erotic
Butcher Shop Blues is on the flip. This blues
contains some details of the slaughter house scenario
which have an authentic ring. It’s possible she had one
of her husbands working on the ‘killing floor’ at some
stage.
He knows a Bow[ie] from a
Barlow, or a Holstein from a Jersey cow. (x 2)
He knows they minute they were killed, on
the d ay up to the hour. (
19)
The first
half of the opening line refers to large knives used in
the slaughter house. But then it’s back to sex!
He cuts my steak in the night time. He grinds my sausage
in the day.
An’ the machine he uses will really take your breath
away. (20)
Ramblin’
Thomas is also suggested to be on Jack Of All Trades
[Para 12713] and this song may have been inspired
using the same theme of having several lovers at the
same time as sung by Clara Smith on Every Woman’s
Blues (CD 1) in 1923. Pinetop Burks, another fine
Texas pianist, covered the Edwards’ song in 1937 as
‘Jack Of All Trades Blues’. Whereas Sippie Wallace was
to cut the only record in the pre-war era as A Man
For Every Day In The Week [OK 8301] in 1926. And on
her remake of I’m A Mighty Tight Woman [Vi 35802]
in 1929 she too, brags of her sexual prowess and fits
in the phrase “I’m a jack of all trades”(21)
This features Sippie’s rich vocals and her own very fine
piano and beautifully augmented by a trio f some of the
best jazz artists of the day in top form., including
Johnny Dodds. She claims “I’m a broad that never
feels blue” (22)
Her closing lines are probably unique on a blues
record.
If you a married man you
ain’t got no business here;
‘Cos when you out with me I might make
your wife shed tears.
‘Cos I’m a mighty tight woman an’ there
is nothin’ that I fear. (23)
In some of
her earlier records, Sippie Wallace was backed by ‘child
prodigy’ Hersal Thomas, her ‘kid’ brother. He also was
on their niece’s recordings, Hociel Thomas, from whom
Bernice Edwards “learned to play piano”. (24)
Particularly fine on her 1925 offering Fish Tail
Dance [OK 8222]. Hersal also cut some exquisite
piano solos, especially the beautiful ‘Suit Case Blues’
also in 1925. Sadly, he died of acute food poisoning
in 1926-at age 20 (b.1906) he was some 2 years older
than Bernice. The 1910 Census lists him as “April
20, age 4 (Hearcile [sic] Thomas).”. (25)
The 2
remaining artists here are represented by Victoria
Spivey with her superb Blood Hound Blues {Vi
38570] from 1929 in which she confesses to murder and
backed by a tremendous band headed by Luis Russell which
featured Henry Allen on trumpet and Pops Foster slapping
his double bass. The other singer is the most
archaic-sounding here-Bessie Tucker who completes this
set with a suitably paced, ‘hollow’ piano by K.D.
Johnson (‘Mr. 49)’ and stretched out--vocals in which
she might have been partly influenced by Clara Smith.
Although
based in Dallas, I have tentatively traced her home to
Greenville, Texas, some 30-odd miles east of Dallas. (26)
Like Lucille Bogan and Clara Smith, railroads often
figured in her blues. As she moans to the Fort Worth
Denver & Colorado RR. which runs past her back door;
accusing the railroad (as blues singers often do) of
taking her man away.
I’ve got the’Fort Worth
an’ Denver Blues’, don’t know which way to go;
Mmmm-mmm. Don’t know which way to go.
I hear that Fort Worth an’ Denver, it
call in my back door. (27)
Black
citizens were often compelled by the ruling whites to
live near the railroad tracks in the earliest part of
the 20th. century.
Like Lucille
Bogan and Lil Johnson, Bessie was a prostitute and
describes her trip as a hobo on a train referred to as
‘The Dummy’ to ply her trade amongst black workers when
they got paid, deep in the Texas piney woods at a
logging camp. (28)
How one of the railroad police hits her with a hefty
piece of wood “ ‘cross the head with a two-by-four.”
(29) before
throwing her off the slow-moving box car.
A little
later, Bessie sings of being committed to a prison gang
in the brutal convict lease system. (30)
Working under the watchful eye of an armed white
guard-‘the Captain’-her anger at the death of her fellow
prisoner called ‘Sal’ reaches boiling point:
Captain got a big
horse-pistol. Ah-haaaah, and he think he’s bad;
Captain got a big horse-pistol. Hah-haaaah,
and he think he’s bad.
I’m gonna take it this mornin’ if he make
me mad. (31)
 Although
light-skinned to the point of looking nearly white,
Bessie’s blues are as raunchy as the other darker
singers on this essential JSP set.
Notes - CD
4
1. Tuuk van
der A. see p.p.90-91. (Blues & Jazz Annual No.3)
2013.
2. Eagle B.
& E.S. LeBlancp.393. (Blues A Regional Experience)
3. TuukIbid.
p.109. The New Paramount Book Of The Blues)
4. Ibid.
p.106.
5.
Ibid.
6. Oliver
Paul. Notes to The Piano Blues Volume Four The Thomas
Family 1925-1929 L.P. [Magpie PY 4404]
1977.
7.
----------“------ p.141. (Blues Off The Record)
8. Evans
David. Notes to Texas Piano Blues Volume 1 1923-1935
CD. [DOCD-5224] 1994.
9. Moanin’
Blues
10. Tuuk Ibid.
p.106. (The New Paramount Book Of The Blues)
11. Dixon
R.M.W. & J.Godrich & H.Rye. p.191.
12. Collinson
John. p.35. from The Frog Blues & Jazz Annual No.1. Paul
Swinton (Ed.) [Frog Records Limited. Fleet, Hants.]
2010.
13. Mean Man
Blues
14. Long Tall
Mama
15. Tuuk Ibid.
p.p.106-107.
16.
Ibid. p.107.
17. Born To
Die Blues
18. Ibid.
19. Butcher
Shop Blues
20. Ibid.
21. I’m A
Mighty Tight Woman - Sippie Wallace.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Tuuk
Ibid. p.106.
25. Eagle &
LeBlanc Ibid.p.493.
26. Haymes
see my article on Bessie Tucker on www.earlyblues.com
27. Fort
Worth And Denver Blues Bessie Tucker.
28. Haymes
‘Railroadin’ Some’. Ibid. (see Ch.2, esp. p.p. 60-61)
29. The
Dummy Bessie Tucker.
30. Haymes
Ibid. (see Ch.6, esp. p.p.189-190)
31. Key To
The Bushes Bessie Tucker.
Bibliography
1. Baker
Jean-Claude & Chris Chase ‘JOSEPHINE THE HUNGRY HEART
[The British
Library. London] 1979.
2. Davies
R.T. ‘MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LYRICS’. [Faber. Faber. London]
1987. Rep. 1st pub. 1963.
3. Dixon
Robert M.W. J.Godrich. Howard Rye. ‘BLUES & GOSPEL
RECORDS 1890-1943’ 4th. ed. [Clarendon
Press. Oxford.] 1997.
4. Eagle
Bob & Eric S. Le Blanc ‘BLUES A REGIONAL EXPERIENCE’ [Praeger.
Santa Barbara, California. Denver, Colorado.
Oxford] 2013.
5. Haymes
Max ‘RAILROADIN’ SOME’ [Music Mentor Books. York]
2006.
6. Hogg
Peter ‘SLAVERY THE AFRO-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’ [The
British Library. London] 1979.
7. Manone
Wingy & Paul Vandervoort II ‘TRUMPET ON THE WING’
[Doubleday]
1948.
8. Oliver
Paul ‘BLUES OFF THE RECORD’ [The Baton Press. Tunbridge
Wells, Kent]
1984.
9. Tuuk
Alex van der ‘THE NEW PARAMOUNT BOOK OF THE BLUES’ [Agram
Blues Books. Overveen, The Netherlands] 2017.
Label
Abbreviations
ARC =
American Record Company
Ba = Banner
BB = Bluebird
Br =
Brunswick
Col =
Columbia
Para =
Paramount
Vo = Vocalion
Discographical details from ‘BLUES & GOSPEL RECORDS
1890-1943. Ibid.
Corrections/additions by Max Haymes.
All
transcriptions by Max Haymes.
Re-formatted
for the website by Alan White.
15th.
July 2017. |
