The blues is, praise be… He
had just barely gotten done with his work for the day, his sun up to sun down
work helping Brother Barnes shoe the plow horses, a job he had held since his
older brother, Ben, had gotten back from the war, the Great War, the war to end
all wars, the war for so-called democracy, World War I, if anybody was asking
and upon returning had decided to move on to Clarksville and later Memphis, on
Mister’s cotton boll massive ten thousand acre delta plantation, than his
father took him aside and asked him , really ordered, to wash up and get ready
to go over to Lancer Lane. The words Lancer Lane made him jump for joy inside,
for this night, this very Saturday night
he would finally, finally, get to play his new guitar, well not really new for
that instrument had been passed down to his father from who knows when, maybe
back to pharaoh times when those old pyramid slaves needed something to take
their minds off their back-breaking work on their relax minute, in front of a
real crowd at the Lancer Lane juke joint and not just before his father, his
siblings, and a few stray cats at Mister’s company store over in Lancersville.
No, he was stepping up in the
world, the world that mattered, the world of those rough-hewed, hard drinking walking
daddies (and their clinking dressed to the nines, dressed to the soft kitten
pillow tumble nines, walked- around women, praise be) that populated the Lancer
Lane juke joint on Saturday night (and paid penance, serious penance, at nearby
Lancer Lane Lord’s Work Baptist on Sunday morning, many times sliding directly
from one site to the other, smoothly if stinking a little of sweat, hard, hard
Sonny Boy’s golden liquor, and mussed up pillow tumble sex ), who would decide
whether he had the stuff his father thought he had. And decide it in the only
way such things were decided, by throwing dollars, real dollars, at him if he
was good and broken whisky bottles (or, if tight for dough, as was often the
case with tough times as just then, and so bought their whisky by the jar,
jars) if he panned. He had asked his father repeatedly since he had turned sixteen
to let him accompany him on his journeys to Lancer Lane (the latter as
performer and as a, ah, imbiber), but his father maybe knowing the wisdom of
sheltering the boy from those whisky bottles and jars if things didn’t work out
just like his father, bless him, before him had held off until he was sure, or
fairly sure of the night’s outcome.
What sonny boy did not know
was that father had relented as much because he was in need of an extra pair of
hands in case Big Nig Fingers showed up that night as that he was ready to have
dollars thrown at his son. The nature of the dispute between Big Nig Fingers
and his father was simply enough explained, a woman, a dressed to the nines
pillow tumble woman, Sonny Boy’s woman, Lucille, and her roving eyes, roving
eyes that landed, allegedly landed, on his father. Alleged by Sonny Boy
although denied, vehemently denied by his father, who had secretly a couple of
years back had had an affair with Lucille when Big Nig was trying to take over,
well take over something, booze, dope, women, numbers, something in Memphis. So
yes, yes indeed, his small-framed father most assuredly and vehemently denied
those roving eyes.
A couple of hours later,
washed up, dressed up in a clean work shirt and pants he and his father having
walked the two dusty miles from their Mister’s plantation-provide quarters, arrived
at the juke house, really nothing but a cabin, a log cabin, belonging to Sonny
Boy Jackson who used the place as a front for his golden liquor sales as well.
(Yes, that Sonny Boy in the days before he went to Clarksville and began the
road to some local fame as the best harmonica in 1920s delta Mississippi, even
getting a record contract from Bee Records when he was “discovered” by one of
the agents that they had sent out scouring the country for talent for their
race record division after Mame Smith set the world, the black world and a few
hip whites on recorded blues fire.) Now, like most cabins in those parts then,
maybe now too, who knows, there was no electricity, hell, nobody practically
except Mister (and the Captain, that deduction crazy Captain, docking everybody
for his version of not a full bale, for sassing back, for breaking tools, hell,
one time for some asthmatic picker just breathing ) had electricity, or a
reason to use it just a few chairs, tables, a counter to belly up to for
whiskey jar orders (bottles were sold out back away from prying eyes, moneyless
prying eyes looking for some cadges swigs), and for the occasion Sonny Boy had
a small stage jerry-rigged in the back so the entertainment would not get
pushed around too much when things got rowdy, as they always did, later in the
evening.
That night he had a surprise
coming, or rather two. His father, taking no chances, had arranged to have a few
members of the Andersonville Sheiks from up the road, who would later in the
decade, some of them anyway, go on to form the Huntsville Sheiks and also get
that coveted record contract from Bee Records when sheiks replaced harmonica
players and barrelhouse mamas as blues fire among blacks and those few hip
whites, to back his son up. So he was going to have a real ensemble, a jug
player, a harp player (harmonica, okay) and a washboard man, his father to play
banjo (if he was sober enough, and while that was in question most of the night
he held up, held up well enough to slide over to Lord’s Work Baptist for the
eight o’clock service even if stinking of sweat and liquor). Papa had done right by him, Big Nig Fingers and
his Lucille (to his father’s dismay) had decided to take a night off so he
would need no cut knife help, and he blasted the place with his strange riffs,
riffs going back to some homeland Africa time. Proof: twenty- seven dollars as
his share of the house. And no whisky
bottles (or jars).
Oh, the second surprise. Miss
Lucy, Miss Lucy Barnes, Miss Lucy Barnes, a sweet sixteen going on thirty, and
no one needed to explain what that meant when a girl, hell, woman had her
wanting habits on, a dark- skinned beauty, all cuddles and curves, the daughter
of his” boss,” the plantation blacksmith, had taken notice of him and kept
sending small jars of Sonny Boy’s golden liquor his way which just made him
play more madly, hell, let’s call it by its right name, he played the devil’s music
like he was the devil himself. By the end of the night she was sitting, table
sitting, just in front of him, waiting for that last encore. Suddenly she
jumped up and started to dance, dance to his encore riff blasted version of Mean, Mistreatin’ Mama shaking her head
back and forth furiously indicating that one Miss Lucy Barnes’ was not in that
category, at least for that night. They too were seen sneaking into that eight
o’clock service at Lord’s Work’s Baptist a little sweaty and stinking of
liquor, having spent the previous few hours in the back room of Sonny’s joint, just in case you wanted to know.
***************
The blues ain’t nothing,
nothing at all but a good woman on your mind, all curves and cuddles, all be my
daddy, daddy, be my walking daddy, build for comfort not for speed just like
your daddy, your real daddy, not your long gone daddy (met as you came up river
from Lancersville via Memphis and he, he returned from another war to end all
wars, this time World War II) just now serving a stretch, a nickel’s worth for
armed robbery up in Joliet for some Southside (Southside Chicago, natch)heist
that went sour, hell, you told long gone daddy that guns didn’t make the play
any better but long gone was just a little too long gone on that twinkle dust
and so when Danville Slim called the shots, long gone was long gone, told you
about when you were knee high and needing instruction about who, and who not,
to mess with when you got your wanting habits on.
Hence, stay away from big
women, big-legged, big bosomed, big- lusted, hell, just big everything, like
the song, the blue blue blue song says, don’t forget, they will wear you out, wear
you out for other women, ditto, long thin gals, hungry girls who have learned
man trap tricks in lieu of big appetites , with wanderlust eyes, and twinkle
dust noses, itching, checking out every daddy, every daddy that came by her
eyes, flashing five dollars bills and another twinkle line, ditto, god’s girls, Sunday morning moaners, smelling
of gin, washtub gin, and carrying juke joint slashes, some mean mama cut her up
when she wrong- eyed mean mama’s daddy, now Sunday looking for, can you believe
it, forgiveness, and trick, getting it, stick with curves and cuddles, an easy
rider, a low love easy rider, she’ll treat you right and no heavy overhead, and
no damn where have you been daddy questions.
She, Miss Lucy she, all
cuddles and curves she, an easy rider, yah, a sweet and low easy rider, to make
a man, well, to make a man get his own wanting habits on, so far away, so far
from uptown downtown Chi town, far down
in sweaty delta Mississippi, maybe still in Clarksville like he left her that
night, that moonless 1942 night, when he had to break-out from delta sweats,
from working sunup to blasted sundown for no pay, for chits, Christ what are
you supposed to do with company chits when you had your Miss Lucy wanting
habits on, needed, no craved, some of Sonny Boy’s honey liquor, from the Mister
on his ten thousand acre cotton boll plantation (selling every last boll too,
good or bad, to the U.S. Army, for, for what else, uniforms), and those damn
deductions from the Captain, for, for sassing, and grab that bus, that
underground bus, out on Highway 61, and head, yah, head north following the
north star, following the migrant trail up-river. A quick stop at Memphis to
see if any of the guys, B.B. (no, not the one you are thinking of), Harmonica Slim,
Delta Dark, Bobby Be-Bop, Big Joe, Muddy (yes, that Muddy slumming down river and
on the low from some Chi town wench whose man was looking, knife looking, for
the guy who messed with his baby and left her blue, real blue. True Muddy
story.) needed a guitar max daddy player.
Then straight to Chi town and
work, work in the hog butcher to the world, work in the Casey steel driving hammering
foundry to the world , work in the grain elevator to the world, work in the
farm machinery equipment factory to the world , good, steady, sweaty work, five
day work and done, five day work, maybe overtime, glad-handed overtime on
Saturday, and done, no Captain’s noise ,
except maybe some rough Irish cop night stick but, mainly, just hell work, and
then off to bumbling squalid three- decker hovel, overcrowded, over-priced,
under heated, damn, nothing but a cold water flat with about six different
nationalities chattering on the fetid Maxwell- connected streets.
Home, home long enough to
turn overalls, sweated blue overalls, into Saturday be-bop blues master, all
silk shirt, about five colors, blue blue, green green sun yellow, deep magenta,
some violent purple, all fancy dance pants, all slick city boy now shoes
(against that po’ boy Lancersville no shoe night to make daddy, real daddy cry,
and mama too), topped by a feathered soft felt hat, de riguer for Saturday prances. For a while singing and playing,
he, mainly playing that on fire(electric)
guitar first learned from daddy, real daddy, down the delta when he was
from hunger and he and daddy Saturday juked for whiskey drinks (for daddy) and
sodas and ribs for him, for nickels and dimes with his long gone daddy (gone
daddy previously mentioned tired of nickels and thus plugging an ironic
nickel’s worth) out behind Maxwell Street, only the prime guys, the guys Chess,
or Ace, or Decca, or, some race label were interested in, for a while, got to
play the big street, the big attention, the big sweep, everybody else behind
for nickels and maybe an off-hand stray piece, a joy girl they called
them, hell he called them when he had
his wanting habits on, not all black or mixed either, a few white joys looking
for negro kicks, looking for kicks before Forest Lawn stockbrokers, or futures
traders made their claims, looking over the new boys in order to say that they
had that, had that before they headed out to Maxwell Street glare or sweet
home, yah, sweet home Joliet. And Miss Lucy waited, waited down in some
lonesome Clarksville crossroad, dust rolling in, sun beginning to rest, watching
the daily underground bus heading north, north to her Johnny Blaze, Johnny
quick on that amped up guitar and the stuff of dreams.
The blues ain’t nothing,
nothing at all but a bad woman on your mind, a woman walking in your place of
work, your stage, your Carousel Club, you just trying to get that damn guitar
weapon, baby, mama, sugar, main squeeze, in tune, the one just off of Maxwell
Street, mecca, with her walking daddy, eyeing you that first minute, big blond
blue eyes, and even walking daddy can feel the heat coming off her, animal heat
mixed up with some Fifth Avenue perfume bought by the ounce , feel that he was
going to spend the night on a knife’s edge. The Carousel Club got a mix, got a
mix on Friday nights when the be-bop crazy white girls, not all big blond blue
eyes but also mixed, decided that be-bop jazz, their natural stomping grounds,
over at places like the Kit Kat Club was just too tame for their flaming 1950s
appetites and so they went slumming, slumming with a walking daddy, a black as
night walking daddy, make no mistake, in tow just in case, in case knives came
into play.
She had her fix on him, her
and that damn perfume that he could smell across the room, that and that animal
thing that some woman have, have too damn much of like his daddy, his real
daddy, told him to watch out for back when he was knee-high and working the jukes
for cakes and candies (and daddy for Sonny Boy’s honey liquor). Just what he
needed, needed now that he had worked his way up from cheap street playing for
nickels and dimes (and, okay, an off-hand piece once the joy girls, some of
them white like this girl, looking for negro kicks, badass negro kicks and then
back to wherever white town, heard him roar up to heaven on that fret board) to
backing up Big Slim, yah, that Big Slim who just signed with Chess and was
getting ready to bring the blues back to its proper place now that it looked like that damn rock and roll, that
damn Elvis who took all the air out of
any other kind of music had run its
course. Then it started, she sent a drink his way, a compliment to his superb
playing on Look Yonder Wall according
to Millie the waitress who played the messenger, then another, ditto on The Sky Is Crying and a Millie watch out
remark. Walking daddy was not pleased and she looked like she was getting just
drunk enough to make her move (hell, he had seen that enough, and not just with
these easy white girls). No sale tonight girlie that bad ass negro really does
look bad ass, bad ass like long gone daddy whom he started on these mean
streets with and was still finishing up another nickel at Joliet. She made her
way to the stage as the first set ended. Pleasant, hell they are all pleasant,
in that polite way they have been brought up in for about four or five
generations, but still with that come hither perfume and that damn hungry look.
No sale, no sale girlie, not with bad ass looking daggers in his eyes. And that
night there wasn’t. Next Friday night she came in alone, came in and sat right
in front of him. Didn’t say a word at intermission, just sent over a drink for
a superb rendition of Mean Mistreatin’Mama , and left it at
that.
After work she was waiting
for him out in back, he nodded at her, and she pointed at her car, a late
model, and they were off. They didn’t surface again for a week.
**************
The blues ain’t nothing but…
He, Daddy Fingers (strictly a stage front name, with a no will power Clarence Mark
Smith real name needing, desperately needing, cover just like a million other
guys trying to reach for the big lights, trying to reach heyday early 1950s Maxwell
Street, hell, maybe trying get a record
contract, a valued Chess contract, and that first sweet easy credit, no down
payment, low monthly payments Cadillac, pink or yellow, with all the trimming
and some sweet mama sitting high tit proud in front), had to laugh, laugh out
loud sometimes when these white hipsters asked him what the blues were.
He, well behind the white
bread fad times, having spent the last twenty years mostly hidden down South,
the chittlin’ circuit down South, from Biloxi to Beaumont, working bowling
alleys, barbecue joints (the best places where even if the money was short you
had your ribs and beer, a few whisky shots maybe, some young brown skin with
lonely eyes woman lookin’ for a high-flying brown skin man in need of a woman’s
cooking , or at least a friendly bed for a few nights), an odd juke house now
electrified, some back road road-side diner converted for an evening into a
house of entertainment, hell even a church basement when the good lord wasn’t
looking or was out on an off Saturday night had not noticed that these kids
asking that august question were not his old Chi town, New Jack City, ‘Frisco
Bay hipsters but mostly fresh-faced kids
in guy plaid short shirts and chinos and girl cashmere sweaters and floppy
skirts were not hip, not black-hearted, black dressed devil’s music hip. For
one thing no hipster, and hell certainly no wanna-be hipster, would even pose
the question but just dig on the beat, dig on the phantom guitar work as he
worked the fret board raw, dig on being one with the note progression. Being,
well, beat.).
Plaid and cashmere sweater
crowding around some makeshift juke stage, some old corner barroom flop spot or
like tonight here on this elegant stage with all the glitter lights at Smokin’ Joe’s
Place, Cambridge’s now the home of the blues, the 1970s reincarnation of homeland Africa, sweated pharaoh slave plantations,
Mister and Captain’s jim crow plantations, juke joints, sweet home Chicago, for
all who were interested in the genealogy of such things came around looking,
searching for some explanation like it was some lost code recently discovered
like that Rosetta Stone they found a
while back to figure out what old pharaoh and his kind said (hell, he
could have deciphered that easy enough
for those interested- work the black bastards to death and if they slack up,
whip them, whip them bad, whip them white, and ain’t it always been so).
So he told them, plaid guy
and cashmere bump sweater girl, told them straight lie, or straight amusing thing,
that like his daddy, his real daddy who had passed down the blues to him, and
who got it from his daddy, and so on back, hell, maybe back to pharaoh times
when those slave needed something to keep them working at a steady
death-defying pace, that the blues wasn’t nothing but a good woman on your
mind. And if some un-cool, or maybe dope addled wanna-be Chi town hipster, or
some white bread all glimmering girl from Forest Hills out for negro kicks, had
been naïve enough to ask the question that would have been enough but plaid and
cashmere wanted more.
Wanted to know why the three
chord progression thing was done this way instead of that, or whether the whole
blues thing came from the Georgia Sea Islands (by way of ancient homeland
Africa) like they had never heard of Mister’s Mississippi cotton boll
plantation, Captain’s lashes, broiling suns, their great grandfathers marching
through broken down Vicksburg, about Brother Jim Crow, or about trying to
scratch two dollars out of one dollar land. Wanted to know if in Daddy Finger’s
exalted opinion Mister Charley Patton was the sweet daddy daddy of the blues,
wanted to know if Mister Robert Johnson did in fact sell his soul to the devil
out on Highway 61, 51, 49 take a number that 1930 take a number night, wanted
to know if Mister Mississippi John Hurt was a sweet daddy of an old man (also
“discovered” of late) like he seemed to be down in Newport, wanted to know if
black-hearted Mister Muddy really was a man-child with man-child young girl
appetites, wanted to know if Mister Howlin’ Wolf ever swallowed that harmonica when
he did that heated version they had heard about of How Many More Years (not knowing that Wolf was drunk as a skunk,
high- shelf whisky not some Sonny Boy’s home brew, when he did that one or that, he Daddy Fingers, had backed Wolf up many a night when Mister
Hubert Sumlin was in his cups or was on the outs with the big man). Wanted to
know, laugh, if Mister Woody Guthrie spoke a better talking blues that Mister
Lead Belly, or Mister Pete Seeger was truer to the blues tradition that Mister
Bob Dylan (like he, Daddy Fingers, spent his time thinking about such things
rather than trying to keep body and soul together from one back of the bus Mister
James Crow bus station to the next in order to get to some godforsaken hidden
juke joint to make a couple of bucks, have some of Sonny Boy’s son’s golden
liquor, and maybe catch a stray lonesome Saturday woman without a man, or if
with a man, a man without the look of a guy who settled his disputes, his woman
disputes, at the sharp end of a knife, wanted
to know, wanted to know, wanted to know more than the cold hard fact that,
truth or lie, the blues wasn’t nothing but a good girl on your mind. Nothing
but having your wanting habits on. But that never was good enough for them, and
thus the fool questions. And always, tonight included, the fool Hey Daddy
Fingers what are the blues. Okay, baby boy, baby girl, the blues is …
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