From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- The Memphis Jug Band’s “K.C. Moan”

…he hadn’t been to K.C. in six years, he, Jason Albert Moore,  in case you are interested ran under the moniker Three River Blackie when he was on that six year road, well, not all of it on the road, the freedom road, but six years if you count that ninety day stretch in the Clay County Jail (no good time, but don’t ask why) and that deuce  in Joliet (years, minus the good time, it was to be up to a nickel, okay) for that armed robbery rap he took the fall for by being just a little too slow up by the Loop one night when he needed dough bad, about as bad as a man with a thirst and a jone needed dough, and the coppers nabbed him going over a back alley fence down over in Illinois, Chicago to be precise.  Yah, he was heading home just as fast that old Illinois Central and whatever other connections he could make to the Missouri line and on to K.C. got him there. He had gotten a letter from his baby, his sweet Minnie, his sweet brown woman, while he was up and she had a nest waiting for him, waiting for him, no questions asked. Just get home, and get home quick. And as he settled himself down on the flat that he had just hopped (and almost didn’t make, he had lost a step or two since the days when he could back into a flat turning down against the engine with his eyes closed) he started thinking about what drove him out those six years ago.               

Yes, part of it was Minnie, of that he had no doubts. Minnie and her wanting ways, wanting to get married, wanting him and them to leave the club circuit (hell, club was too fancy a word most nights, bowling alley, juke joint, barbecue pit, movie theater, somebody’s rent party house, a bus station in the colored section of town, any place that could hold a crowd of more than twenty or so) leave the showboat  slow and easy life that he had been practically born to (his Pa had taught him the one- string guitar attached to a post on the cabin he grew up in down in Biloxi when he was five and he never looked back, from one to twelve strings, he could play it all, and had played every venue in the south until the music, the making money music, started drifting west to places like Cairo, Decatur, and Kansas City), wanting him (and maybe her too, she threw that in sometimes like a man throws a dog a bone) to get a steady regular job (doing what, picking cotton, heaving dockside barrels, fetching for Mister somewhere, he asked, he who never even finished sixth grade), and most of all wanting to have his child (and he figuring that child meant a house, a bringing up house, and fixing up house, and cleaning up house, and painting a house and maybe growing tulips or something to give some color). No, he was not interested. Thank you Miss Minnie, thank you a lot, but no thanks.        

Part of it though was what happened that night, that night he hightailed it from old K.C.  See, he had first met Minnie at Pistol Pete Johnson’s old barrelhouse down in the bottoms a couple of years before (niggertown, to the white folks, okay, or what did some white guy from New York call him one night, thinking he was being respectful, oh yah, nigra, yah nigratown), Pete’s being a big stop on the circuit, where she, K.C. born and bred, was busting forth with some wicked great blues stuff covering Bessie (Me and My Gin, Hustling Dan, Bed Bug Blues, really good stuff),some Ma Rainey, and some gal who just blew into town, Memphis Minnie (doing Minnie’s Girlish Days better than Memphis Minnie because she actually was more girlish). He was then playing with a couple of guys (different guys in different places depending on who was sober enough to make the next stop) who called themselves the Biloxi Sheiks (everybody was using that moniker in those days after the Mississippi Sheiks, made it big, made it big with a record contract so everybody wanted to be a sheik something, sheik of araby, maybe).

They were going nowhere and so, after some cooing and doving with Miss Minnie, he proposed that they work as a team, and they did. And for a couple of years, until Minnie got her wanting habits on, that list he thought about before , they made dough, big dough, big, ha, nigra dough. Then, after about twenty fights about settling down, Minnie just up and quit, left the circuit, and left him flat. He started drinking, drinking high- shelf whiskey and smoking reefer, sweet dream reefer to take the edge off as he went on the road solo. One night, drunk and stoned, in Clarksville down in the Mississippi Delta at Harpoon Harry’s juke joint a guy, a young punk, called him out, said he played like some old pappy grandpa and to move over and die. They stepped out back as was the custom to settle such blood words and he cut that young brother up, cut him up bad. And so, taking nothing except what he had on with him, he fled, fled for his life, fled north, north to Chi town, north and troubles.                        

As he thought about that time he also realized that part of it was that he wanted to be a drifter, wanted to be a rolling stone. He had had some good times, some bad times, had made some money on Maxwell Street, had lost some, had had some fine women, some fine high yella women, and some as dark as night, and then moved on. He had been his own man, and as that old train started heading its way west, he determined that he wasn’t going to K.C. after all, maybe to Detroit or New York, yah, New York where they would just call him nigra…     

 

Send "K.cc. Moan" Ringtone to your Cell

Well, I thought I had heard that K C when she moan
Thought I heard that K C when she moan
Thought I heard that K C when she moan
Well, she sound like she got a heavy load

Yes and when I get back on the K C road
When I get back on the K C road
When I get back on the K C road
Gonna love my woman like I never loved before


(From: http://www.elyrics.net)
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well I thought I heard that K C whistle moan
Well she blow like my woman's on board

When I get back on that K C road
When I get back on that K C road
When I get back on that K C road
Gonna love my baby like I never loved before