Negro workaday 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 thoroughly 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 rôle in Negro life.

Behind the popular blues songs of today lie the more spontaneous and naïve 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.[5]

Very few of the Negro’s ante-bellum secular songs have been preserved, but there is every reason to suppose that he had numerous melancholy songs aside from the spirituals. At any rate, the earliest authentic 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.[6]

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.[7] 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:

Sometimes it is a note of longing:

At other times the dominant note is one of disappointment:

A third characteristic of the blues is the expression of self pity.[14] 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—to his hard lot. The following expressions will make the point clear.[15]

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 mountaineer, 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 themselves, what is there about them to account for the superior status enjoyed by the Negro’s melancholy 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 introduction 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 naïveté 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.

When the first published blues appeared, the problem for the student of Negro song began to become complicated. It is no longer possible to speak with certainty of the folk blues, so entangled are the relations between them and the formal compositions. This inter-relation is itself of such interest and importance 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.[17] 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 phonograph 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 of “race blues.” They employ Negro artists, many of whom have already earned national reputations, and they advertise extensively, especially in the Negro press.

In spite of the extremes to which exploitation of the blues has gone in recent years, there is often an authentic 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 following comparison of a few of the lines and titles of songs collected twenty years ago with lines and titles of recent popular blues songs.

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.

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:

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 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:

Thus in a single song we have examples of the processes of borrowing, combining, changing, and misunderstanding 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 everything that he has ever heard. One of his favorite expressions is

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

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

Examples of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely, 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 consider 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.

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 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
• Alabama Blues
• Birmingham Blues
• Mobile Blues
• Selma Bama Blues
• Bama Bound Blues
• Georgia
• Atlanta Blues
• Decatur Blues
• Georgia Hunch
• Georgia Blues
• Louisiana
• Lake Pontchartrain Blues
• Lou’siana Low-down Blues
• New Orleans Hop Scop Blues
• New Orleans Wiggle
• Shreveport Blues
• Mississippi
• Mississippi Blues
• Ole Miss Blues
• Mississippi Delta Blues
• Texas
• Dallas Blues
• Houston Blues
• Red River Blues
• Waco Texas Blues
• Seawall Special Blues
• Virginia
• Virginia Blues
• Hampton Roads Blues
• Norfolk 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 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.[21]

• 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, O God
• 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
• I 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
• Can Anybody Take Sweet Mama’s Place?
• You Don’t Know My Mind
• Baby, Won’t 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’ Hearted Blues, Cryin’ 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 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 becomes 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 advantages 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 naïveté 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 lonesomeness 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.