The reason why there's so much blues music here is that a bunch of us like
the blues. We study that. That's all we can do. We never had no money or
nothing. What else we gonner study 'bout but something to have a good
time with? So that's why these blues come from us. We never had no
money. We never had no place to go and have a nice time. We worked all
the time, so we try to git us an old guitar.
What else do we use? Gimme a bucket and let me knock here and there
and show him how it go. We have a good time. Take a washboard, take a
comb with paper. Sometimes we have a guitar. Sometimes an old broomstick
for the beat, or for the bass58.
Why do you think they play the blues in Mississippi? Because of the way
they used to work folks here — up at daylight in the morning
chopping cotton. They'd get out there and work so hard, they end up
looking at the sun, saying, "Hurry, hurry, sundown. Let tomorrow shine."
They wanted the sun to go down so they could stop working, they worked
so hard. They learned the blues from that. And then they learned the
blues from the women. You can get the blues about a woman; you go to
kissing and hugging on her, and then don't get to see her for three or
four nights. You can get the blues there.
Understand me now? You warm up to a woman and then you won't see her
three or four days, that will give you the blues. Most anything like that
will give you the blues. And Mississippi got more of it than anywhere
else, 'cause all the blues people come up here singing the blues.59
Everything here is the blues. It goes back to feelings. How you feel
today. You know blues has always been something that you don't have to be
black to have the blues. You can be white, and wake up in the morning and
something is blue on you. You understand what I'm talking about, around
your bed, and you done got blue.
So you understand what I'm talking about. Everybody gets the blues
sometime or another. I know you've had the blues. I'm sure you've had
the blues sometime or another in your life. Like when your girlfriend
quit you. You thought you was in love and she was in love, and all at
once you found out she's gone and you say, "Man, I'm sad here, and I'm
blue."
That's what it is. Uh Huh. Everybody get the blues. If you wake up
in the morning and you don't have no money in your pockets, and you can't
get a loaf of bread, ain't you blue? And the baby crying too!
Now I'm going to tell you about the life of the blues. Now this is the
blues:
Living ain't easy and times are tough
Money is scarce, and we all can't git enough
Now my insurance is lapsed and my food is low.
And the landlord is knocking at my door.
Last night I dreamed I died.
The undertaker came to take me for a ride.
I couldn't afford a casket,
And embalming was so high,
I got up from my sick bed because I was too poor to die.
Now ain't that blue?60
Several documentary films by William Ferris on the rural black South
can be found at Folkstreams.net.
These include Give My Poor
Heart Ease: Mississippi Delta Bluesmen (1975, Color, 21 minutes), I Ain't Lying: [Black] Folktales
from Mississippi (1975, color, 22 minutes),
Sonny Ford, Delta Artist
(1969, color, 41 minutes), and
Black Delta
Religion (1973; B/W, 14 minutes)
as well as Gandy Dancers
(1994, color, 31 minutes), by Barry Dornfeld and Maggie Holtzberg-Call.
To examine how Southern rural white oral tradition may differ from that
of the Black population, another interesting film by William Ferris on the
Folkstreams.net website is Ray Lum: Mule Trader (1972,
color, 18 minutes). There are also a number of other interesting films
available via the Folkstreams.net website that provide background
on the linguistic and cultural variations of different American regions
and groups.
recording [Mp3, 3.05] provided by
Bill Ferris, Center for the Study of Southern Culture