Chapter II. The Blues: Workaday Sorrow Songs

CHAPTER II: THE BLUES- WORKADAY SORROW SONGS

No story of the workaday song life of the Negro can
proceed far without taking into account the kind
of song known as the blues, for, next to the spirituals,
the blues are probably the Negro's most distinctive
contribution to American art. They have not been
taken seriously, because they have never been thorough-
ly understood. Their history needs to be written.
The present chapter is not a complete statement.
It merely presents some of the salient points in the
story of the blues and offers some suggestions as to
their role in Negro life.

Behind the popular blues songs of today lie the more
spontaneous and nai've songs of the uncultured Negro.
Long before the blues were formally introduced to the
public, the Negro was creating them by expressing his
gloomy moods in song. To be sure, the present use of
the term "blues" to designate a particular kind of
popular song is of recent origin, but the use of the
term in Negro song goes much further back, and the
blue or melancholy type of Negro secular song is as
old as the spirituals themselves. The following song
might be taken at first glance for one of the 1926
popular "hits," but it dates back to the time of the
Civil War. 1

I'm gwine to Alabamy, — Oh,
For to see my mammy, — Ah.

 

x Allen, Ware, and Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, p. 89j
This note is appended: "A very good specimen ... of the strange
barbaric songs that one hears upon the Western steamboats."

 

18 Negro Workaday Songs

She went from ole Virginny, — Oh,
And I'm her pickaniny, — Ah.

She lives on the Tombigbee, — Oh,
I wish I had her wid me, — Ah.

Now I'm a good big nigger, — Oh,
I reckon I won't git bigger, — Ah,

But I'd like to see my mammy, — Oh
Who lives in Alabamy, — Ah.

Very few of the Negro's ante-bellum secular songs
have been preserved, but there is every reason to sup-
pose that he had numerous melancholy songs aside
from the spirituals. At any rate, the earliest authen-
tic secular collections abound in the kind of songs which
have come to be known as the blues. The following
expressions are typical of the early blues. They are
taken from songs collected in Georgia and Mississippi
between 1905 and 1908, and they were doubtless
common property among the Negroes of the lower
class long before that. 1

Went to the sea, sea look so wide,

Thought about my babe, hung my head an' cried.

my babe, won't you come home?

1 got the blues, but too damn mean to cry,

Oh, I got the blues, but I'm too damn mean to cry.

Got n'owhar to lay my weary head,

O my babe, got nowhar to lay my weary head.

I'm po' boy long way from home,
Oh, I'm po' boy long way from home.

Ever since I left dat country farm,
Ev'ybody been down on me.

 

1 This collection was published by Howard W. Odum in the Journal of
American Folk-Lore, vol. 24, pp. 255-94; 351-96.

 

The Blues 19

Here are blues in the making. This is the stuff that
the first published blues were made of, and some of
it sounds strikingly like certain of the latest blues
records issued by the phonograph companies. About
1910 the first published blues appeared, and since that
time they have been exploited in every imaginable
form by music publishers and phonograph companies. x
The inter-relations between the formal blues and the
native blues will be discussed later. At present it is
necessary to take up certain questions concerning the
nature of the blues.

What are the characteristics of the native blues, in
so far as they can be spoken of as a type of song apart
from other Negro songs? The original blues were so
fragmentary and elusive — they were really little more
than states of mind expressed in song — that it is
difficult to characterize them definitely. The following
points, then, are merely suggestive.

In the first place, blues are characterized by a tone
of plaintiveness. Both words and music give the
impression of loneliness and melancholy. In fact, it
was this quality, combined with the Negro's peculiar
use of the word "blues," which gave the songs their
name. In the second place, the theme of most blues
is that of the love relation between man and woman.
There are many blues built around homesickness and
hard luck in general, but the love theme is the principal
one. Sometimes the dominant note is the complaint
of the lover:

 

1 W. C. Handy is credited with having published the first blues (Memphis
Blues, 1910) and with having had much to do with their popularization. He
is still writing songs. His works include Memphis Blues, St. Louis Blues,
Beale St. Blues, Joe Turner Blues, Yellow Dog Blues, Aunt Hagar's Blues,
and others.

 

20 Negro Workaday Songs

Goin' 'way to leave you, ain't comin' back no mo',
You treated me so dirty, ain't comin' back no mo'. 1

Where was you las' Sattaday night,
When I lay sick in bed?
You down town wid some other ol' girl,
Wusn't here to hoi' my head. 2

Sometimes it is a note of longing:

I hate to hear my honey call my name,
Call me so lonesome and so sad. 3

I believe my woman's on that train,

babe, I believe my woman's on that train. 4

At other times the dominant note is one of disap-
pointment:

1 thought I had a friend was true;
Done found out friends won't do. 5

All I hope in this bright worl',

If I love anybody, don't let it be a girl. 6

A third characteristic of the blues is the expression
of self pity. 7 Often this is the outstanding feature
of the song. There seems to be a tendency for the
despondent or blue singer to use the technique of the
martyr to draw from others a reaction of sympathy.
Psychologically speaking, the technique consists of
rationalization, by which process the singer not only
excuses his shortcomings, but attracts the attention
and sympathy of others — in imagination, at least —

 

1 The Negro and His Songs, p. 184.

2 Ibid., p. 185.

3 Ibid., p. 224.

4 Ibid., p. 222.
s Ibid., p. 250.

6 Ibid., p. 181.

7 For a discussion of this subject, see Lomax, "Self-pity in Negro Folk
Song," Nation, vol. 105, pp. 141-45.

 

The Blues 21

to his hard lot. The following expressions will make
the point clear. l

Bad luck in de family, sho' God, fell on me,
Good ol' boy, jus' ain't treated right.

Poor ol' boy, long ways from home,
I'm out in dis wide worl' alone.

Out in dis wide worl' to roam,
Ain't got no place to call my home.

Now my mama's dead and my sweet ol' popper too,
An' I ain't got no one fer to carry my troubles to.

If I wus to die, little girl, so far away from home,
The folks, honey, for miles around would mourn.

Now it is apparent to any one familiar with the folk
songs of various peoples that the blues type, as it has
been described above, is not peculiar to the Negro,
but is more or less common to all races and peoples.
So far as subject matter and emotional expression are
concerned, the lonesome songs of the Kentucky moun-
taineer, of the cowboy, of the sailor, or of any other
group, are representative of the blues type. If this
be so, then why was it that the Negro's song alone
became the basis for a nationally popular type of song?
The answer to this question is, of course, far from
simple. For one thing, the whole matter of the
Negro's cultural position in relation to the white man
is involved. The Negro's reputation for humor and
good singing is also important. Perhaps, too, the
psychology of fads would have to be considered. But,
speaking in terms of the qualities of the songs them-
selves, what is there about them to account for the
superior status enjoyed by the Negro's melancholy
songs ?

^Illustrations are taken from The Negro and His Songs unless otherwise
indicated.

 

22 Negro Workaday Songs

To begin with, the Negro's peculiar use of the word
"blues" in his songs was a circumstance of no mean
importance. Much more significant, however, was the
music of the blues. The blues originated, of course,
with Negroes who had access to few instruments other
than the banjo and the guitar. But such music as they
brought forth from these instruments to accompany
their blues was suited to the indigo mood. It was
syncopated, it was full of bizarre harmonies, sudden
changes of key and plaintive slurs. It was something
new to white America, and it needed only an intro-
duction to insure its success.

But there is still another feature of the blues which
is probably responsible more than any other one thing
for their appeal and fascination, and that is their lack
of conventionality, their naivete of expression. The
Negro wastes no time in roundabout or stilted modes
of speech. His tale is brief, his metaphor striking,
his imagery perfect, his humor plaintive. Expressions
like the following have made the blues famous.

Looked down the road jus' far as I could see,

Well, the band did play "Nearer, My God to Thee."

Well, I started to leave an' I got 'way down the track;
Got to thinkin' 'bout my woman, come a-runnin' back.

Wish to God some ol' train would run,
Carry me back where I came frum.

I laid in jail, back to the wall:
Brown skin gal cause of it all. *

When the first published blues appeared, the problem
for the student of Negro song began to become com-
plicated. It is no longer possible to speak with
certainty of the folk blues, so entangled are the re-

1 See Perrow, "Songs and Rhymes from the South," Journal of American
Folk-Lore, vol. 28, p. 190.

 

The Blues 23

lations between them and the formal compositions.
This inter-relation is itself of such interest and im-
portance that it demands the careful attention of
students of folk song. Only a few points can be
touched upon in the present work, but an attempt will
be made at least to indicate some of the ramifications
of the subject.

There is no doubt that the first songs appearing in
print under the name of blues were based directly
upon actual songs already current among Negroes. *
Soon after Handy began to issue his blues, white people
as well as Negroes were singing them heartily. But a
song was never sung long in its original version alone.
The half-dozen stanzas of the original often grew to a
hundred or more, for many singers took pride in creating
new stanzas or adapting parts of other songs to the new
one. Sometimes publishers would issue second and
third editions, incorporating in them the best of the
stanzas which had sprung up since the preceding
edition. Thus, even before the phonograph became
the popular instrument that it is today, the interplay
between folk creations and formal compositions had
become extremely complex.

In the last ten years the phonograph record has
surpassed sheet music as a conveyor of blues to the
public. Sheet music, however, is still important.
In fact, practically every "hit" is issued in both the
published and phonographed form. But the phono-
graph record obviously has certain advantages, and it
is largely responsible for the present popularity of the
blues. Most of the large phonograph companies now
maintain special departments devoted to the recording

1 See James Weldon Johnson, The Book of American Negro Poetry,
pp. x-xiv; and Dorothy Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs,
pp. 269-70.

 

24 Negro Workaday Songs

of "race blues." They employ Negro artists, many
of whom have already earned national reputations,
and they advertise extensively, expecially in the
Negro press.

In spite of the extremes to which exploitation of the
blues has gone in recent years, there is often an au-
thentic folk element to be found in the present-day
formal productions. Some of the phonograph artists
are encouraged by their employers to sing blues of their
own making. When the artist has had an intimate
acquaintance with the life of his race and has grown
up among the blues, so to speak, he is often able to
produce a song which preserves faithfully the spirit
of the folk blues. The folk productions of yesterday
are likely to be found, albeit sometimes in versions
scarcely recognizable, on the phonograph records of
today. That this is the case is indicated by the fol-
lowing comparison of a few of the lines and titles of
songs collected twenty years ago with lines and titles
of recent popular blues songs.

Lines and Titles of Songs Lines and Titles of Recent
Collected Twenty Years Popular Blues

 

Ago

 

Laid in jail, back to the wall. Thirty days in jail with my

back turned to the wall.

Jailer, won't you put 'nother Look here, mister jailer, put

man in my stall? another gal in my stall.

Baby, won't you please come Baby, won't you please come

home? home?

Wonder where my baby stay las' Where did you stay last night?
night?

I got my all-night trick, baby, Vm busy and you can't come

and you can't git in. in.

 

1 See Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 24; also The Negro and His
Songs.

 

The Blues 25

I'll see her when her trouble's I'm gonna see you when your
like mine. troubles are just like mine.

Satisfied. I'm satisfied.

You may go, but this will bring I got what it takes to bring you
you back. back.

Joe Turner Joe Turner blues.

Love, Kelly's love. Love, careless, love.

I'm on my las' go-round. Last go-round blues.

When a blues record is issued it quickly becomes the
property of a million Negro workers and adventurers
who never bought it and perhaps never heard it played.
Sometimes they do not even know that the song is
from a record. They may recognize in it parts of
songs long familiar to them and think that it is just
another piece which some songster has put together.
Their desire to invent a different version, their skill
at adapting stanzas of old favorites to the new music,
and sometimes their misunderstanding of the words
of the new song, result in the transformation of the
song into many local variants. In other words, the
folk creative process operates upon a song, the origin
of which may already be mixed, and produces in turn
variations that may later become the bases of other
formal blues. A thorough exposition of this process
would take us far beyond the limits of this volume,
but the following instances are cited to illustrate
generally the interplay between the folk blues and the
formal blues.

Here is a specimen captured from a Negro girl in
Georgia who had just returned from a trip to "Troit,"
Michigan.

When you see me comin'
Throw yo' woman out de do',

 

26 Negro Workaday Songs

For you know I's no stranger,
For I's been dere once befo'.

He wrote me a letter,

Nothin' in it but a note.

I set down an' writ him,

"I ain't no billy goat." i

Standin' on de platform,
Worried in both heart an' soul;
An' befo' I'd take yo' man
I'd eat grass like a Georgia mule.

I love my man

Lak I love myse'f.

If he don't have me

He won't have nobody else.

Now this song is a mixture of several popular blues.
The first stanza is from the House Rent Blues, and is
sung practically the same as on the phonograph record.
The second stanza is from the Salt Water Blues and is
like the original except for the repetition in the original
of the first two lines. The third stanza is also from
the Salt Water Blues, but it is a combination and
variation of two stanzas which go as follows:

Sittin' on the curbstone,
Worried in both heart an' soul;
Lower than a 'possum
Hidin' in a ground-hog hole.

I wrote my man,

"I ain't nobody's fool;

An' befo' I'd stand your talkin'

I'd eat grass like a Georgia mule."

This girl does not worry over the lack of consistent
meaning in the third stanza of her song. Furthermore,
as far as she is concerned, "soul" and "mule" rhyme
about as well as "fool" and "mule." The fourth

 

The Blues 27

stanza of her song, finally, is taken from Any Woman' 's
Blues, there having been, however, a slight variation
in the second line. The original is:

I love my man
Better than I love myself;
An' if he don't have me,
He won't have nobody else.

Thus in a single song we have examples of the proc-
esses of borrowing, combining, changing, and mis-
understanding through which formal material often
goes when it gets into the hands of the common folk.
The composite of four stanzas presented above has no
very clear meaning in its present form, but at that it
is about as coherent as any of the blues from which it
was assembled.

Left Wing Gordon, whose story is told in Chapter
XII, is a good study in the relation of folk song and
formal blues. Left Wing's repertoire is practically
unlimited, for he appears to have remembered every-
thing that he has ever heard. One of his favorite
expressions is

You don't know my mind,
You don't know my mind;
When you see my laughin',
I'm laughin' to keep from cryin'.

This comes from You Don't Know My Mind Blues,
a popular sheet music and phonograph piece today.
Left Wing sings dozens of stanzas, some evidently
from the published versions, some of his own making,
ending each one with "You don't know my mind,"
etc. Nearly all of his songs showed this sort of
mixture of formal and folk material.

As an example of the misunderstanding, deliberate
twisting of the words of a phonograph blues, or lapse

 

28 Negro Workaday Songs

of memory, the following instance may be cited.
In the Chain Gang Blues this stanza occurs.

Judge he gave me six months
'Cause I wouldn't go to work.
From sunrise to sunset
I ain't got no time to shirk.

A^ Southern Negro on a chain gang recently sang it
thus:

Judge he give me sentence
'Cause I wouldn't go to work.
From sunrise to sunset
I don't have no other clean shirt.

Examples of this kind might be multiplied in-
definitely, but these will suffice. In the notes on the
songs in the various chapters of this book will be
found comments bearing upon the relation of formal
blues and folk songs.

Thus it is clear that in many cases there is a complex
inter-relation and interaction between the folk song
and the formal production. But the tendency has
been on the whole for the latter to get further and
further away from folk sources. Few authors now
attempt to do more than imitate certain features of
the old-time blues. In order to understand more
clearly the present situation, it is necessary to con-
sider for a moment the blues as they are manufactured
today.

There are at least three large phonograph companies
which give special attention to Negro songs. They will
be designated herein as "A," "B," and "C." The
following table, compiled from data obtained from the
general "race record" catalogs of these three companies,
gives an idea of the importance of the blues.

 

[The Blues Table]

 *No classical titles listed. t Includes 28 classical titles.

In this table only those titles including the word
"blues" have been counted as blues. If the term were
expanded to include all songs which are now popularly
known as blues, it would be found that upwards of
seventy-five per cent of the total number of secular
songs listed in the catalogs would fall in this class.
The "A" catalog bears the title, "A" Race Records —
The Blue Book of Blues; the "B" catalog follows
titles like Oh, Daddy, Brown Baby, Long Lost Mama,
etc., with the explanation, "blues song" or "blues
record"; and the "C" catalog bears the title, "C"
Race Records — The Latest Blues by "C" Colored Artists.
Certainly the popular notion among both whites and
Negroes now is that practically every Negro song
which is not classed as a spiritual is a blues. The
term is now freely applied to instrumental pieces,
especially to dance music of the jazz type, and to every
vocal piece which, by any stretch of the imagination,
can be thought of as having a bluish cast.

A survey of the titles in the three catalogs mentioned
above yields some interesting data concerning the
nature of the formal blues. For one thing, there are
sixty or seventy titles of the place or locality type.
Southern states and cities figure prominently in this

 

30 Negro Workaday Songs

kind of blues, although the popularity of Northern
localities is on the increase. The favorite states are
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and
Virginia. The chief titles for these states are as
follows :

Alabama Mississippi

Alabama Blues Mississippi Blues

Birmingham. Blues Ole Miss Blues

Mobile Blues Mississippi Delta Blues

Selma Bama Blues

Bama Bound Blues Texas

Dallas Blues
Georgia Houston Blues

Atlanta Blues Red River Blues

Decatur Blues Waco Texas Blues

Georgia Hunch Seawall Special Blues

Georgia Blues

Virginia
Louisiana Virginia Blues

Lake Ponchartrain Blues Hampton Roads Blues

Louisiana Low-down Blues Norfolk Blues

New Orleans Hop Scop Blues
New Orleans Wiggle
Shreveport Blues

There are also, to name only a few others, Arkansas
Blues, Florida Blues, California Blues, Carolina Blues,
Omaha Blues, Michigan Water Blues, Memphis Blues,
Tulsa Blues, St. Louis Blues, Salt Lake City Blues,
Wabash Blues, and Blue Grass Blues. Finally there
are foreign titles, such as London Blues and West
Indies Blues. Titles, of course, are not to be taken as
accurate indices of the contents of the songs. As a
matter of fact, most of the songs bearing titles of the
locality type really deal with the relation of man and
woman.

Another feature of the formal blues is their tendency
to specialize in certain slang expressions. "Sweet

 

The Blues 31

mama," "sweet papa," "daddy," "jelly roll," and a few
other expressions have been thoroughly popularized
among certain classes, white and Negro, by the blues
songs. By actual count, titles containing one or
more of the words, "mama," "daddy," "papa,"
"baby," constitute twenty-five per cent of the total
number of secular titles in the catalogs referred to
above.

It is to be expected that a very large proportion of
these present-day blues (using the term now in the
broad sense as it is popularly used) deals with the
relation of man and woman. In fact, if the locality
types, most of which are based on the love relation,
and the "mama-papa" type were eliminated from the
count, there would be a mere handful left. The
following titles will give some impression of the nature
of the songs which deal with the man-woman relation. *

Leave My Sweet Papa Alone

I've Got a Do-right Daddy Now

Mistreated Mama

Slow Down, Sweet Papa, Mama's Catching up With You

Sweet Smellin' Mama

Black but Sweet, God

 

1 Any one who is acquainted with the slang and vulgarity of the lower
class Negro will suspect immediately that there are often double meanings
in titles like those listed here. Such is the case. Negro songs writers and
phonograph artists usually have had intimate acquaintance with Negro
life in all of its forms, and they have doubtless come across many a song which
was too vulgar to be put into print, but which had certain appealing qualities.
Often a melody was too striking to be allowed to escape, so the writer fitted
legitimate verses to it and, if it was at all possible, preserved the original
title. Thus it comes about that many of the popular Negro songs of today
— and white songs, too, as for that — have titles that are extremely sug-
gestive, and are saved only by their perfectly innocuous verses. The sug-
gestiveness of the titles may also be one explanation of why these songs
have such a tremendous appeal for the common folk, black and white. It
may be that in these songs, whitewashed and masked though they be, they
recognize old friends.

 

32 Negro Workaday Songs

How Do You Expect to Get My Lovin'?

He May Be Your Man, but He Comes to See Me Sometimes

Changeable Daddy

Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night

How Can I Be Your Sweet "Mama" When You're "Daddy"
to Some One Else?

You Can Have My Man if He Comes to See You Too

That Free and Easy Papa of Mine

You Can't Do What My Last Man Did

Mistreatin' Daddy

If I Let You Get Away With It Once You'll Do It All the
Time

Daddy, You've Done Put That Thing on Me

I'm Tired of Begging You to Treat Me Right

My Man Rocks Me With One Steady Roll

Do It a Long Time, Papa

No Second Handed Lovin' for Mine

/ Want a Jazzy Kiss

I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down

Beale Street Mama

Big Fat Mama

Lonesome Mama

You've Got Everything a Sweet Mama Needs but Me

If You Don't Give Me What I Want I'm Gonna Get It

Somewhere Else

Mama Don't Want Sweet Man Any More

If You Sheik on Your Mama

Mean Papa, Turn in Your Key

Take It, Daddy, It's All Yours

How Long, Sweet Daddy, How Long?

You Can Take My Man but You Can't Keep Him Long

 

The Blues 33

Can Anybody Take Sweet Mama's Place?

You Don't Know My Mind

Baby, Wont' You Please Come Home?

Then there are innumerable miscellaneous titles
and sentiments. One may have the Poor Man Blues,
Red Hot Blues, Through Train Blues, Railroad Blues,
Crazy Blues, Stranger Blues, Don't Care Blues, Goin'
'Way Blues, Bleedin 1 Hearted Blues, Cry in' Blues,
Salt Water Blues, Mountain Top Blues, Thunderstorm
Blues, Sinful Blues, Basement Blues, House Rent Blues,
Reckless Blues, and even the A to Z Blues. Here
again however, titles are misleading, for practically
all songs bearing such titles really deal with the man-
woman theme.

It may be worth mentioning that the majority of
these formal blues are sung from the point of view of
woman. A survey of titles in the "A," "B," and "C"
catalogs shows that upwards of seventy-five per cent
of the songs are written from the woman's point of
view. Among the blues singers who have gained a
more or less national recognition there is scarcely a
man's name to be found.

It is doubtful whether the history of song affords a
parallel to the American situation with regard to the
blues. Here we have the phenomenon of a type of
folk song becoming a great fad and being exploited in
every conceivable form; of hundreds of blues, some of
which are based directly upon folk productions, being
distributed literally by the million among the American
people; and the Negro's assimilation of these blues
into his everyday song life. What the effects of these
processes are going to be, one can only surmise. One
thing is certain, however, and that is that the student
of Negro song tomorrow will have to know what was

 

34 Negro Workaday Songs

on the phonograph records of today before he may dare
to speak of origins.

Whether the formal blues have come to stay or not,
it is impossible to tell at present. Possibly they will
undergo considerable modification as the public be-
comes satiated and the Negro takes on more and more
of the refinements of civilization. That their present
form, however, is acceptable to a large section of
Negro America is indicated by the fact that the
combined sales of "A," "B," and "C" blues records
alone amount to five or six millions annually.

The folk blues will also undergo modification, but
they will always reflect Negro life in its lower strata
much more accurately than the formal blues can. For
it must be remembered that these folk blues were the
Negro's melancholy song long before the phonograph
was invented. Yet the formal songs are important.
In their own way they are vastly superior to the
cruder folk productions, since they have all of the ad-
vantages of the artificial over the natural. They may
replace some of the simpler songs and thus dull the
creative impulse of the common Negro folk to some
extent, but there is every reason to suppose that there
will be real folk blues as long as there are Negro toilers
and adventurers whose naivete has not been worn off
by what the white man calls culture.

The plaintiveness of the blues will be encountered
in most of the songs of this volume. It is present
because most of the songs were collected from the
class of Negro folk who are most likely to create blues.
In the next chapter certain general songs of the blues
type have been brought together but the note of lone-
someness and melancholy will be struck in the songs of
the other chapters as well, especially in those dealing
with jail and chain gang, construction camp, and the
relation of man and woman.