More Blues (1)
The poems here are all in the three-line stanza. A few in other forms are in More Blues (2).
Countin’ the Blues
Layin’ in my bed with my face turned to the wall,
Lord layin’ in my bed with my face turned to the wall,
Tryin’ to count those blues so I could sing them all.
Memphis, Rampart, Beale Street—set them free,
Lord Memphis, Rampart, Beale Street—set them free,
Graveyard and ’Bama Bound, Lord, Lord come from stingaree.
Lord sittin’ on the Southern, gonna ride all night long,
Lord sittin’ on the Southern, gonna ride all night long,
So cold and downhearted, they was all good times.
Lord ’rested at midnight, jailhouse made me lose my mind,
Lord ’rested at midnight, jailhouse made me lose my mind,
Bad luckin’ boll weevil made me think of ol’ boom times.
Lord I’m going’ to sleep now, jes’ now got bad news,
Lord I’m goin’ to sleep now, jes’ now got bad news,
Try to dream away my troubles a-countin’ these blues.
Gertrude Rainey (1886–1939)
Empty Bed Blues
I
I woke up this mornin’ with an awful achin’ head
I woke up this mornin’ with a wful achin’ head
My new man had left me just a room and an empty bed
Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find
Bought me a coffee grinder, got the best one I could find
So he could grind my coffee, ‘cause he had a brand new grind
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He can touch the bottom and his wind holds out so long
He knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day
Lord he knows how to thrill me, he thrills me night and day
He’s got a new way of lovin’ almost takes my breath away
Lord, he’s got that sweet somethin’, and I told my gal friend Lou
He’s got that sweet somethin’, and I told my gal friend Lou
From the way she’s ravin’, she must have gone and tried it too.
II
When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue
When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue
My springs are getting’ rusty, sleepin’ single like I do
Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
Bought him a blanket, pillow for his head at night
Then I bought him a mattress so he could lay just right
He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
He came home one evening with his spirit way up high
What he had to give me made me wring my hands and cry
He give me a lesson that I never had before
He give me a lesson thaty I never had before
When he got through teachin’ me, from my elbow down was sore.
He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
He boiled my first cabbage and he made it awful hot
Then he put in the bacon, it overflowed the pot
When you get good lovin’, never go and spread the news
When you get good lovin’, never go and spread the news
Yeah, it will double cross you and leave you with them empty bed blues.
J.C. Johnson
Mountain Top Blues
(Blue Mama’s Suicide Wail)
Feel so sad and sorrowful, runnin’ over with the Blues
Feel so sad and sorrowful, runnin’ over with the Blues
If some one buys me poison, that’s the kind of death I’ll choose!
Goin’ up to the mountain top, throw myself down in the sea
Climb up to the mountain, throw myself down in the sea
Jes let the sharks and fishes make a big fuss over me!
Find a big high rock to jump from, stones all thick down on the ground
Big high rock to jump from, stones all thick down on the ground,
And when you find me, you’ll see lots of pieces layin’ round!
Got myself a brand new hammock, placed it underneath a tree
Got a brand new hammock, placed it underneath a tree
I hope the wind will blow so hard the tree will fall on me!
Spencer Williams (1889–1965)
Mean Old Bedbug Blues
Well, bedbug sure is evil, they don’t mean me no good
Yeah, those bedbugs sure is evil, they don’t mean me no good
Think he’s a woodpecker, and I’m a chunk of wood
When I lay down at night, I wonder how can a poor gal sleep
When I lay down at night, I wonder how can a poor gal sleep
When some is holding my hand, others eatin’ my feet
Bedbugs as big as a jackass will bite you and stand and grin
Bedbugs as big as a jackass will bite you and stand and grin
Will drink all the bedbug poison, turn around and bite you again
Somethin’ moaned in the corner, I tried my best to see
Somethin’ moaned in the corner, and I went over and see
It was a bedbug was a-prayin’, “Lord, give me some more to eat.”
Joe Davis
Black Mountain Blues
Back in Black Mountain, a child will smack your face
Back in Black Mountain, a child will smack your face
Babies cryin’ for liquor, and all the birds sing bass
Black Mountain people are bad as they can be
Black Mountain people are bad as they can be
They uses gunpowder just to sweeten their tea
On this Black Mountain, can’t keep a man in jail
On this Black Mountain, can’t keep a man in jail
If the jury finds them guilty, the judge’ll go they bail
Had a man in Black Mountain, sweetest man in town
Had a man in Black Mountain, the sweetest man in town
He met a city girl and he throwed me down
I’m bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun
Lord, I’m bound for Black Mountain, me and my razor and my gun
I’m gonna shoot him if he stands still, and cut him if he run
Down in Black Mountain, they all shoots quick and straight
Down in Black Mountain, they all shoots quick and straight
The bullet’ll get you if you starts a-dodgin’ too late
Got the Devil in my soul, and I’m full of bad booze
Got the Devil in my soul, and I’m full of bad booze
I’m out here for trouble, I’ve got the Black Mountain Blues
H. Cole
New Gulf Coast Blues
The Gulf of Mexico flows into the Mobile Bay
The Gulf of Mexico flows into the Mobile Bay
I’m gonna let that cold stream of water flow over my head some day
Tell me, Mr. Mailman, what is on your mind?
Tell me, Mr. Mailman, what is on your mind?
When you pass my door, look like you are blind
My eyes are brown, my teeth are pearly white
My eyes are brown, my teeth are pearly white
Because my skin is dark don’t mean my heart ain’t right.
Clarence Williams (1898–1965)
Terrible Operation Blues
Get up on this table pull off that gown
Get up on this table pull off that gown
Raise up that right leg let that left one down
Pull off them stockings that silk underwear
Pull off them stockings that silk underwear
The doctor’s got to cut you mama don’t know where
You got two or three tumors shape like a cube
You got two or three tumors shape like a cube
Two or three leaks in your inner tube
Bring on that ether bring on that gas
Bring on that ether bring on that gas
The doctor’s got to cut you mama yas yas yas
Four monkey-wrenches two-horse shay
Four monkey-wrenches two-horse shay
Pair of old britches and a bale of hay
Your ribs was kind of loosened they moved about
Your ribs was kind of loosened they moved about
If I hadn’t sewed you up everything would fell out
I put in new tubes tightened up the exhaust
I put in new tubes tightened up the exhaust
Went into your hood and cleaned your spark plugs off
Your body’s kind of weak don’t be hard
Your body’s kind of weak don’t be hard
From now on you be careful with them there connection rods
Thomas A. Dorsey (Jane Lucas?) (1899–1993)
Maltese Cat Blues
Rats is mean in my kitchen
and I lost my Maltese cat
Rats is mean in my kitchen
and I lost my Maltese cat
I’m going to make things right with my good gal
man and it’s tight like that
I’m going to start walking
walk the shoes clean off of my feet
I’m going to start walking
walk the shoes clean off of my feet
Just thinking about my mama
and man that woman sure is sweet
I ain’t got no suitcase :
I don’t have a one bottle of gin
I ain’t got no suitcase
I don’t have a one bottle of gin
I’ve got to stay drunk to keep warm
because my clothes is so thin
Long lonesome train
come passing me a-flying
Long lonesome train
come passing me a-flying
I was thinking about my mama
and I didn’t pay that train no mind
When you get a-home
buy a Maltese cat
When you get a-home
buy a Maltese cat
And a good strong brownskin
man it’s tight like that
Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929)
Terraplane Blues
Well I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
Well I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
Who’s been driving my terraplane for you
since I’ve been gone
I said I flashed your lights mama
your horn won’t even blow
I said I flashed your lights mama
your horn won’t even blow
Got a short in this connection
hoo well babe and it’s way down below
I’m going heist your hood mama
I’m bound to check your oil
I’m going heist your hood mama
I’m bound to check your oil
I got a woman that I’m loving
way down in Arkansas
Now you know the coils ain’t even buzzing
little generator won’t get the spark
Now you know the coils ain’t even buzzing
little generator won’t get the spark
Motor’s in a bad condition
you got to have these batteries charged
I’m crying please
please don’t do me wrong
I’m crying please
please don’t do me wrong
Who’s been driving my terraplane
now for you since I’ve been gone
Mr highwayman
please don’t block the road
Mr highwayman
please don’t block the road
Because she’s registering a cold one hundred
and I’m booked till I got to go
Eeeee
you can hear me weep and moan
Eeeee
you can hear me weep and moan
Who’s been driving my terraplane now for you
since I’ve been gone
I’m going to get deep down in this connection
keep on tangling with your wires
I’m going to get deep down in this connection
keep on tangling with your wires
And when I mash down on your little starter
then your spark plug will give me fire
Robert Johnson (1911–1938)
Talking to Myself Blues
Good Lord good Lord
send me an angel down
Good Lord good Lord
send me an angel down
Can’t spare you no angel
but I swear I’ll send you a teasing brown
That new way of loving
mama it must be best
That new way of loving
mama it must be best
These here Georgia women
just won’t let Mr. Samuel rest
There was a crowd out on the corner
wondered who could it be
There was a crowd out on the corner
wondered who could it be
It weren’t a thing
but the women trying to get to me
I even went down to the depot
with my suitcase in my hand
I even went down to the depot
with my suitcase in my hand
Crowds of womens all crying
Mr. Samuel won’t you be my man
My mama she told me
when I was a boy playing mumblepeg
My mama she told me
when I was a boy playing mumblepeg
Don’t drink no black cow’s milk
don’t you eat no black hen’s eggs
Black man give you a dollar
mama he won’t think it nothing strange
Black man give you a dollar
mama he won’t think it nothing strange
A yellow man’ll give you a dollar
but he’ll want back ninety-five cents change
You may call me a cheater
pretty boy I’ll real treat you
You may call me a cheater
pretty boy I’ll real treat you
But if you’ll allow me a chance
I’ll gnaw your back bone half in two
I took a trip out on the ocean
walked the sand of the deep blue sea
I took a trip out on the ocean
walked the sand of the deep blue sea
I found a crab with a shrimp
trying to do the shimmy-shee
I want to tell you something mama
seem mighty doggone strange
I want to tell you something mama
seem mighty doggone strange
You done mess around gal
and made me break my yo-yo string
Honey I ain’t going to be
your old work ox no more
Honey I ain’t going to be
your old work ox no more
You done mess around baby
and let your doggone ox get poor
My mama she got a mojo
believe she trying to keep it hid
My mama she got a mojo
believe she trying to keep it hid
Papa Samuel got something
to find that mojo with
I even heard a rumbling
deep down in the ground
I even heard a rumbling
deep down in the ground
It weren’t a thing
but the women trying to run me down.
Blind Willie McTell (1898–1959)
Note: More Blues (1)
“Black Mountain Blues,” “Mean Old Bedbug Blues, “New Gulf Coast Blues,” and “Countin’ the Blues” are taken from Angela Y. Davis’ excellent selection in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism; Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (Vintage Books, 1998).
“Mountain Top Blues” comes from W.C. Handy, ed., Blues; an Anthology, introduction Abbe Niles, illulstrations Miguel Covarrubias (1926).
“Terrible Operation Blues,” “Maltese Cat Blues,” and “Talking to Myself” come from Michael Taft’s prodigious Blues Lyric Poetry; an Anthology (Garland 1983)
Bessie Smith and W.C. Handy have individual entries in Table of Contents.
In his introduction to Blues Lyric Poetry Taft says that the anthology
makes available to the reader a large and varied selection of blues lyrics which have either never appeared in print before, or which are scattered among smaller anthologies and blues studies. All of the texts transcribed here are from the 1920–1942 period—the race records era—and comprise over two thousand commercially recorded songs sung by over three hundred and fifty singers. (ix)
Which sufficiently explains why numerous poems by A-team figures like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey aren’t there. Obviously when Taft says, “Since this work concentrates upon the lyrics rather than the music of the song form, my inclusion or exclusion of texts in this anthology was based on lyric poetry criteria,” he wasn’t thinking of them.
Taft reports that a couple of other scholars
have both seen the blues as primarily a poetic form, and ex-blues singer Rubin Lacy agrees: “The blues is not sung for the tune. It’s sung for the words mostly. A real blues singer sings a blues for the words.” (ix)
Which separates them from a lot of classic American show-biz songs, where the music has had primacy during the creating, and approximates them more to French and German cabaret-type lyrics.
I’ve flicked my eyes across virtually every text in Taft’s 379-page anthology, with poems, not poets, and the general aims of A New Book in mind, looking for items that feel a bit different. There is a good deal of repetition, such as waking up with the blues. Taft doesn’t, I think, indicate whether the names attached to texts are those of lyricists, composers, or performers. In the absence of information to the contrary, I’ve assumed that they are one and the same.
Lines are numbered consecutively, but the poems are without repetitions or stanza breaks. Colons indicate caesuras (largely as heard while transcribing from records), but there are no other pause-signifying punctuation marks, nor are they needed.
Since the colons don’t seem strong enough now for the long-line “Maltese Cat Blues,” “Terraplane Blues,” and “Talking to Myself,” I’ve used one of the conventional print formats for those poems.
The traditional three-line blues stanza, basically a self-sufficient couplet with the first line repeated, but with variations possible, is one of the very few 20th-century stanzaic inventions. The total number of such blues must be vast. In Taft’s “Concordance Index of Titles,” there are seven pages of double columns with the word “Blues” in them. Here, picked at random, is the start of one such column, with 136 more titles on that page to go:
People People Blues, I Got to Go Blues, West End Blues, Wicked Daddy Blues, The Kalb Chain Blues, My Dream Blues, Whiskey Man Blues, Writin’ Paper Blues, Stole Rider Blues, Mr. McTell Got the Blues, Statesboro Blues, Travelin’ Blues, Drive Away Blues, Love-Changing Blues, Broke Down Engine Blues, Scarey Day Blues, Rollin’ Mama Blues, Searching the Desert for the Blues, Death Cell Blues… (p.333)
The following come from the six-CD Louis Armstrong and the Blues Singers, 1924–1930.
See See Rider Blues, Jelly Bean Blues, Countin’ the Blues, Texas Moaner Blues, Poor House Blues, Thunderstorm Blues, Screamin’ the Blues, Good Time Flat Blues, Broke Busted Blues, St. Louis Blues, Reckless Blues, Sobbin’ Hearted Blues, Mining Camp Blues, The Railroad Blues, Shipwrecked Blues, Court House Blues, My John Blues, Nashville Womean’s Blues, Careless Love Blues, J.C. Holmes Blues, Coal Cart Blues, Santa Claus Blues, Low Land Blues, Kid Man Blues, Lazy Woman Blues, Lonesome Lovesick Blues, Gambler’s Blues, Sunshine Blues, A Washwoman Blues, Lonesome All Alone Blues, Deep Water Blues, Special Delivery Blues, Jack of Diamond Blues, The Mail Train Blues, The Bridwell Blues, Pratt City Blues, Lovesick Blues, Lonesome Weary Blues, Dead Drunk Blues, Lazy Man Blues, The Flood Blues.
Checking in Taft would have been unfeasible. But in Davis’s anthology, I found that of the one-hundred-and-fifty-nine lyrics in it that had been recorded by Smith, some thirty are in the three-line stanza with the second line an exact repetition of the first, and that in some twenty-five the second line is varied, and that about fifty others are in other forms. Davis’s preferences come into it, I imagine, but the proportions feel plausible.
In his fascinating Escaping the Delta; Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (2005), Elijah Wald, himself a performer as well as musicologist, and exasperated by the later romantic location of blues authenticity in the imagined figure of a lone figure in coveralls trudging dusty Delta roads with a raging hangover, emphasizes that most of the best-known classic blues performers were, or aspired to be, accomplished professional entertainers who lived as stylishly as they could and for whom the blues were items among others in repertoires including hits like “You Are My Sunshine,” “Button Up Your Overcoat,” and “Pennies from Heaven.” Bessie Smith sings Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
Kevin Young, ed., Blues Poems (2003) in the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series covers a lot of bases with respect to the extension of the concept. As with other genres, what makes a blues lyric truthful is not its provenance but how the words go.
More Blues (1) consists of lyrics in the classic blues stanza, with a few in other forms in More Blues (2).
There is a superb recording of “Backwater Blues” by Carrie Smith—not a relative of Bessie’s. An excellent compilation of classic women blues singers is I Can’t Be Satisfied; Early American Women Blues Singers, two disks, available separately (Yazoo, 1997). Personally I find the women singers preferable to the men, with obvious exceptions like Robert Johnson. When it comes to sexual relationships, women in the blues grieve, men bitch. Well, much of the time.
Taft’s “Discography” lists some 200 twelve-inch LPs.