Click on the headline to link
to a YouTube film clip of Howlin’
Wolf performing Killing Floor.
CD Review
Cannon’s Jug Stompers: The
Complete Works, The Cannon Jug Stompers, Yazoo Records, 1989
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 horses, on Mister’s cotton boll massive ten thousand
acre delta plantation, than his father took him aside and asked, really ordered,
him to wash up and get ready to go over to Lancer Lane. The words Lancer Lane
made him jump for joy inside, for this Saturday night he would finally, finally,
get to play his new guitar, well no 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.
No, he was stepping up in the
world, the world that mattered, the world of those rough-hewed, hard drinking daddies
(and their clinking women, praise be) that populated the juke house 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 and hard, hard Sonny Boy’s golden
liquor), 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 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 (as performer and as, 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. The nature of the dispute between Big Nig Fingers and his father was
simply enough explained, a woman, rather Sonny Boy’s woman, Lucille, and her
roving eyes, roving eyes that landed, allegedly landed, on his father.
A few hours later, washed up,
dressed up in a clean work shirt and pants he
and his father having walked
the two dusty miles from Mister’s plantation 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
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.) Now, like most
cabins, there was no electricity, hell, nobody practically except Mister (and
the Captain, that deduction crazy Captain) 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), and for the occasion Sonny
Boy had a small stage jerry-rigged 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, 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.
Oh, the second surprise. Miss
Lucy, Miss Lucy Barnes, Miss Lucy Barnes, a sweet sixteen going on thirty, a
dark skinned beauty, all cuddles and curves, the daughter 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 work like he was the
devil himself. They too were seen sneaking into that eight o’clock service at
Lord’s Work’s Baptist a little sweaty and stinking of liquor, just in case you
wanted to know.
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