Here is a construction camp which employs largely Negro workers. In four years 8,504 laborers were employed and there was an average labor turnover of once each month, or forty-eight different sets of men working on the buildings and road under construction during that time. This camp employed men from different Southern states in the order named: North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana; while stragglers represented eleven states outside the South. Why this turnover? Why do men travel from state to state? Of what sort are they? How many road camps and construction groups throughout the South duplicate this record? What are the experience, history, difficulties of the Negro worker by the roadside? Why does he quit his job? Where will he go for the next?

The entire story of the casual laborer will, of course, have to be told elsewhere in thorough studies of migration and case studies of many individuals. It is a remarkable story, sometimes unbelievable. It is not the purpose of this chapter to go into the matter of causes, but to present a picture of the workaday songster as a sort of cumulative example of the whole story of this volume. It is true that his early home life, his training, his experience, his relation to the whites, have all influenced him greatly. It is true also that there is often slack work, poor conditions of housing and work, little recreation, small wages, and always a call to some better place. But we are concerned with these here only as they are a part of the background of the picture. Here is a type perhaps more representative of the Negro common man than any other. Now a youngster of eight, father and mother dead, off to Texas to an uncle, then—“po’ mistreated boy”—he goes to Louisiana, then to Mississippi, then to Georgia, across South Carolina, back home to North Carolina, then off to Philadelphia, to Pittsburg, to Ohio, to Chicago, then back to the East and Harlem and back South again. He is typical of a part of the Negro movement of the decade. But there is continuously a stream of moving laborers from country to town, from town to town, from city to city, from state to state, from South to North. Here is hardship, but withal adventure, romance, and blind urge for survival.

As an example of this worker and songster we present John Wesley Gordon, alias Left Wing[86] Gordon, commonly called “Wing.” He is very real, and one could scarcely imagine a better summary of the lonesome road, if made to order. Recent popular volumes portraying the species hobo show no wanderers arrayed like these black men of the lonesome road. Walt Whitman’s

would seem a gentle taunt to Left Wing Gordon on the red roads of Georgia or on the Seaboard rods in “sweet ol’ Alabam’.” He had, at the last writing, given excellent tale of working, loafing, singing his way through thirty-eight states of the union, with such experience and adventure as would make a white man an epic hero. “You see, boss, I started travelin’ when I wus ’leven years ol’ an’ now I’ll be thirty this comin’ August 26th. I didn’t have no father an’ mother, so I jes’ started somewheres. I’d work fer folks, an’ they wouldn’t treat me right, so I moved on. An’, Lawd, cap’n, I ain’t stopped yet.” And so he hadn’t, for when on the morrow we came to put the finishing touches on his story, a fellow laborer said, “Law’, boss, Wing done gone to Philadelphia.”

“Wing,” who started from St. Joseph in Missouri, lost his arm at eighteen years of age. He gives the following concrete data about some of the places where he has worked and loafed. What story might have been written if we had taken the states alphabetically, asking him for full details, with plenty of time, one can only imagine. Here is the order in which he volunteered information about the different states, in the geography of which he appears to be something of a scholar. The phraseology belongs to Wing and the inconsistencies remain as in his Iliad.

Wing was also a great songster. “When de ‘Wing Blues’ come out, dat’s me,” he would say. His chief refrain was always

of which he had many versions. This chorus was easily adapted to a hundred songs and varied accordingly. “When you see me laughin’, I’m laughin’ just to keep from cryin’,” or “I’m tryin’ to keep from cryin’,” or “When you think I’m laughin’, I’m cryin’ all the time.” There were his other versions, such as

with its similar variety, such as “I’m leavin’ to worry you off my min’,” or “When you think I’m leavin’ I’m comin’ right behin’.” Wing claimed a “Blues” for every state and more; if there was none already at hand, he would make one of his own. There were the various Southern blues, the Boll Weevil Blues, Cornfield Blues, Gulf Coast Blues, Atlanta Blues, Alabama Blues, Birmingham Blues, Mississippi Blues, Louisiana Low Down, Shreveport Blues, New Orleans Wiggle, Norfolk Blues, Virginia Blues, Oklahoma Blues, Memphis Blues, Wabash Blues, St. Louis Blues, Carolina Blues, Charleston Blues, and many others.

It must be admitted that Wing’s blues were mixed and of wonderful proportions. He could sing almost any number of blues, fairly representative of the published type, with, of course, the typical additions, variations, and adaptations to time and occasion.

Wing called that the Louisiana Blues, and certainly for the time being it was so. And for Georgia, although in his narrative he had given the Empire State of the South the usual Negro reputation of quick passage, he sang a mixed blues.

Then for Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, California, Virginia, there were other fragments, besides numerous formal versions.

Before continuing Left Wing’s story, giving something more of the scope of his adventures, perhaps the best further introduction will be the exact record of some of his songs in the order in which he gave them. Wing had practically no variation in his tunes and technique of singing. A high-pitched voice, varied with occasional low tones, was the most important part of his repertoire. But what variation in words and scenes, phrases and verses, the recording of which would exhaust the time and endurance of the listener and call for an ever-recording instrument! For certainly the effort to transcribe everything Wing gave left the visitor amazingly exhausted, marveling at the jumbled resourcefulness of the singer, wishing for some new type of photography which would register the voice, looks, experience, and inimitable temperament of this itinerant camp follower.

Differing slightly in tone, Wing sets out on a new song only to swing back again to the same lonesome blues; indeed he makes his technique and his whines as he goes, the result blending into a remarkable product.

Left Wing’s story of his wanderings does not omit, of course, the woman part of his “lovin’ worl’.” Try as he might to sing of other experiences, inevitably he would swing back to his old theme.

Wing, however, does not jump into the deep blue sea, although like the other traditional bull frog he does jump from place to place. Concerning the women about whom he sings, he affirmed, “Can’t count ’em, take me day after tomorrow to count ’em. Find fifteen or twenty in different cities. New Orleans best place to find most fastest, mo’ freer women,—person find gang of ’em in minute.

“But I had some mighty fine women. Fust one was Abbie Jones, ’bout —— Ioway Street. Nex’ was in M——, Missouri, Jennie Baker, Susan Baker’s daughter. Nex’ one St. Louis, lady called Bulah Cotton, Pete Cotton’s daughter. Nex’ one was in Eas’ St. Louis, her name Sylvia Brown. Nex’ I had in Poplar Bluff, one dat took my money an’ went off, Effie Farlan, had father name George Farlan. Nex’ Laura, she’s in Memphis, Tennessee, she’s ’nother took my money an’ gone. Jes’ lay down, went to sleep, jes’ took money an’ gone. Wake up sometimes broke an’ hongry, they jes’ naturally take my money. Nex’ woman was at Columbia, S. C., ’bout las’ regular one I had, Mamie Willard, mother an’ father dead. Sweethearts I can git plenty of if I got money. If I ain’t got none I’se sometimes lonesome, but not always, ’cause sometimes dey feel sorry fer you an’ treat you mighty fine anyway.”

Wing tells some remarkable stories, evidently products of the perfect technique of appeal and approach, in which formality and easy-going ways are blended with great patience and persistence. This series of adventures alone would make a full sized volume albeit there is no need to publish it abroad. Typical, however, are the chant verses below.

Wing says he never stays in any place more than three weeks, “leastwise never mo’ ’n fo’.” Sometimes he walks, sometimes he rides the rods, sometimes when money is plentiful he rides in the cars. He has had his tragic and his comic experiences. The spirit of the road is irrevocably fixed in him and he can think in no other terms. Some day a Negro artist will paint him, a Negro story teller will tell his story, a “high she’ff” will arrest him, a “jedge” will sentence him, a “cap’n” will “cuss” him, he will “row here few days longer,” then he’ll be gone.