On June 18, we spent the day restocking our larder, and performing maintenance on both the Studebaker and the SoundScriber. Bunny made sure the vehicle was well oiled and its tires in good shape. We bought more alcohol and cigarettes, since it’s obvious these are necessary to woo songs out of our subjects. I am in a quandary as to how to notate the purchasing of alcohol on expense reports. I am quite sure Spivacke will understand, but his masters at the Library of Congress may not.
The next morning, we drove south near the Alabama border, to a farmstead near a church, in Ardmore, Tennessee, to record that afternoon a group of men, all Negro farmhands. Their names were, as marked on the acetate sleeves: Otis Steck, “Big” Mike Battle, Vester White, and Jimmy James.
When we arrived, late in the afternoon, we were greeted warmly by the men and their hangers-on: pretty women in flowered hats and calico dresses, teens in Sunday church garb, and children scampering about, their high-pitched voices cutting through the dust cast up by the Studebaker’s wheels. Life on the road had left me in a daze, and it took some counting for me to recall that today was a Sunday, and so most of these gathered folks would’ve been here since midmorning for a church service and now a recording with the “gubmint” men. They welcomed us inside the church house, a one-room affair, and the preacher, a thickset, dapper man with dark skin and a lovely deep voice, bowed out to let us “young folk sing and dance in ways not entirely for the lord’s benefit, but for the community’s, I’m sure,” and I thanked him heartily. It was a rare open-mindedness he displayed for a country preacher.
After setting up the SoundScriber, I gathered the musicians behind the church, sharing some of the whiskey and cigarettes I’d brought. Of the four men, Vester White seemed the leader. He was a man of raw physicality, high and noble cheekbones, and indeterminate age—and I’ve known since my days working at the Harrow Club that it’s a common joke among blacks that white men can’t tell the age of Negroes—but I would have known Vester was eldest if only from his demeanor and not the halo of gray threaded through his hair. He seemed to me ineffably tired, and I could understand that reality due to the Southern situation and his place in it. Scars ran up his arms and he was missing the tips of his fingers on his right hand. “But I can still pick a guitar just fine, sir.”
“Let me ask you a question,” he said, after taking a pull of the whiskey bottle.
“All right, Mister White, ask away,” I said.
He stopped. “Best if you didn’t call me that, sir,” he said.
“What?”
“Mister,” he said. “’Nother white man hear that, ’round here, they won’t be too pleased, that’s for sure.”
“Calling you ‘Mister’?”
“That’s the size of it,” he said.
I nodded. It was their world I was trying to enter. I had to be open to what they chose to tell me. Even the ugliness of it. Which, I was afraid, there would be quite a lot of.
“What is your question?”
“Why do a prim and proper white man come down here wanting us black folk to sing for you?” he said.
The other men chuckled, and Bunny snorted, but I could tell Vester White was utterly serious about his question. I considered giving him the spiel I had nearly memorized already, the mission of the Library of Congress and so forth, but I didn’t think that was what he was asking.
I said, “The world is changing, Vester, and if we don’t take down your songs, they might be forgotten.”
“No, sir,” he said. “Big Mike and Otis and Jimmy know all I got to sing.”
“That might be true,” I said. “But Big Mike might change a verse, or a word, or a chord, and then the song changes some and it’s not wholly yours anymore. Then someone learns it from him and changes it some and suddenly it’s not anything like Vester White’s version.”
Vester mock-raised his hand as if to strike Big Mike, who cowered dramatically even though he was a foot taller and heavily muscled. “Ain’t gone steal nothin’ from me, Mike!” he cried. Once their bit of jovial theater was finished, Vester said, “I thank you for answerin’.”
“You’re very welcome,” I said.
When the bottle was finished, and a number of cigarettes had been smoked—“It mellows my voice considerable,” Otis Steck informed me—we entered the church. Some of the congregation had grown bored and left, mostly those women with children in tow, but many of the younger folk had remained.
Vester chose to go first. I positioned him in front of the microphone, instructed him on the best way to sing into it and still get the sound of his guitar.
“We like to start with ‘Stagger Lee,’” I said. “Since both white and black folks know that one.”
“Never been that fond of Stacker, but I imagine I could give it a round,” Vester said.
I readied the SoundScriber’s stylus and set it to cutting.
“We begin recording with Mister Vester White,” I said, and pointed to him.
He leaned in and said to the microphone, “Hello, President Roosevelt.”
I looked at Bunny and he shrugged.
After a few moments I said, “Mister White, you can start now.”
“I’m waiting for the president to hello me back,” Vester said.
Bunny laughed. I smiled with him. “I’m afraid this only records, it does not transmit,” I said.
“Shame, I’d like to tell him what we think of him down here,” Vester said, and then winked. I did not know if that would be praise or criticism, and with the stylus curling away at the acetate, I did not ask.
He began to play. It was a wholly new version of “Stagger Lee” to me, familiar in structure and theme, but with a different chord progression and an introduction I had not heard before. In this version, Vester told the story in a speaking voice of Billy Lyons (or “Billy de Lyons”) and Stagger Lee gambling in a coal mine, with the intimation that Billy is white and Stagger Lee is black, an interesting variation made more interesting by the fact that, through cheating at cards, Billy Lyons steals Stagger Lee’s Stetson hat. I have seen men, both white and Negro alike, inordinately proud of their hats—such that someone taking one would cause great umbrage and wounded pride. So, Stagger Lee is justified (as much as one can be) in the murder.
However, in this version, it is the story of a black man killing a white man. As I looked out at the listeners, none of them would meet my gaze.
From there the song went down predictable paths but ended in the refrain of “he’s a bad man, Stagger Lee,” the same phrase so heavily featured in the Caucasian version. It occurred to me that this refrain of “he’s a bad, bad man” could be protective coloration, like dun-colored grouse in the field—an appended chastisement of Stagger Lee’s behavior in order to avoid accusation of promoting violence against whites. Yet, the music was jubilant, joyful.
Understandable. I wished I could express to those listening that I am not as the white men they know, they live under the rule of. That I fought for them, and even now, on this commission, I fight still so that their culture—so maligned and denigrated by the larger white world—does not fall away, ground into the dust of history without remembrance.
But I am too outré, and there is too much bad blood—every day a litany of outrages and ignominious diminutions—for me to ever be more than an outside observer. You can live all your life on the outside looking in, never from the inside looking out.
The outside looking in. I imagine that’s how Vester and his companions feel, too. Their whole lives.
Once Vester had finished the song, I removed the cutting arm and delicately swept away the acetate rinds that had curled away from the surface and replaced it with the tone arm, and the sounds of Vester’s voice filled the church. His eyes grew large and he laughed and the rest of the congregated Negroes in the little wooden building laughed too and murmured about the marvel that was the SoundScriber for a long while. When they had settled, I placed a virgin acetate on the recorder.
Vester went on
to render a version of “Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down,” then on to “Buzzard Lope” and “Ain’t Going to Rain No More,” followed by “Soft Bed and a Half Dollar,” which had copious mentions of the anatomy of women, especially their legs and feet. I have appended the transcriptions to my report. His songs spanned multiple twelve-inch acetate discs.
The next two men were eager to perform, once they saw how the SoundScriber worked. Big Mike Battle and Jimmy James, neither of whom played instruments, simply sat down in front of the microphone and began singing in strong, unadorned, but mellifluous voices—delivering rousing but shorter versions of “Stagger Lee” and then progressing on to “Rock Island Line” and “Cornfield Holler.”
The last player, Otis Steck, was physically much smaller than the other men, but he held himself with such poise that when he borrowed Vester White’s guitar and sat in front of the microphone, the church stilled, the observers quieted.
“Sir, I know a good piece of that ole ballad of Stackerlee.”
“Well, that’s just fine,” I said. “I’d love to hear it. Is it considerably different than Vester’s?”
“I’ll say. But the thing is,” he said, shifting uncomfortably, “I’m a mite nervous singin’ it in here, under the cross.”
I will not lie, at his words my pulse quickened.
“Well, that’s fine, that’s quite all right,” I said, suddenly verbose. “Sing what you want to sing, and maybe afterward, we could move our recorder out a ways in that nearby cotton field and you could sing it there. Would that be all right?”
“Sounds fine to me, sir,” he said. “Though it’s coming up on dark.”
So I set the SoundScriber to cutting acetate and Otis Steck sang “Take This Hammer” and “Boll Weevil” and “Bottle Full of Scotch” inside the church. He had a bright, penetrating tenor voice, and toyed with the longer phrases, dancing around the root notes in a sort of cante jondo style that came down, through the years, from French Guinea and Barbados, Martinique and Jamaica; further back still, down the generations from West Africa, but coalescing in this man as a pure and intimate expression of the American experience.
When we played them back to him, he smiled and said, “This mean I’m gone be a radio star?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But that’s not our purpose here.”
“Shame,” he said. “I could use a new suit.”
Vester said, “A new one? Gots to have a suit before you can need a new one.” Laughter, then, except from Otis, who smiled but did not let it touch his eyes.
Bunny and I moved the SoundScriber out of the church, into the field, with the help of some of the men. As Otis had said, dusk was rising up around us in a half-light, and the sun hung over the far tree line by a mere finger’s breadth. Our shadows moved as loping and distended figures with the aging day, our feet casting up dust.
The SoundScriber we placed on a point of hard-packed ground near the furrows, and I quickly attached the Edison batteries and readied a disc. I did not want anything to stall or dissuade Steck from his decision to sing his version of “Stagger Lee.” As the sun went down, and the sky beyond suddenly bloomed with streaks of color, bruised purple and orange, we watched the rest of the observers leave, either by foot, or wagon and mule, or farm truck. I explained to Steck and Vester—the only two who remained behind—the ambient noise could ruin a recording, outside. In all honesty, I did not know that this was true; however, the engineer from the Library of Congress had lectured me earnestly that it was best to record in the quietest of surroundings, and that made eminent good sense.
As we came to a point where we were ready to set the cutting arm to etching, Steck said, “Way I figure it, you really want to hear this song.”
I was sweating heavily, as was Bunny, from the effort of setup. Both of our breaths came in heaves. Otis Steck and Vester White, though, were both dry and mildly amused at our discomposure. I nodded to Steck.
“I figure, lemme get some of them squares from you, and a bit more whiskey, and maybe a dollar or two, and I can run through everything I know again.”
“Squares?” I asked.
“Them smokes,” Steck replied.
Bunny trotted back to the Studebaker and returned with a fresh pack of Pall Malls and a bottle of whiskey, both with unbroken bonded stickers. He handed the cigarettes to Steck, cracked open the bottle and took a long pull, handed it to me so I could follow suit. Steck laughed at the order of things.
“Getting dark,” Vester said, passing over his guitar once more. “Let’s roll this thang.”
I handed the bottle to Steck, whose bobbled throat worked up and down three times in long, deep swallows before he set the bottle down. He sat down in the folding chair, at the edge of the field, in the lubed and woozy way of someone who just felt a wallop of alcohol hit their bloodstream.
“Ole devil Stacker Lee, then,” he said.
Otis looked to me and gave a significant nod and I moved the cutting arm into place and started the SoundScriber recording.
He moved through a version of “Stagger Lee” that was less bouncy and jubilant than Vester White’s. He hung on a single chord for a long while, before moving to the fourth and fifth chords, and back again. The fretting was slurry, indistinct, and his fingering of the strings twisted the sounds into more of a minor lilting melody.
In Steck’s version, both Billy and Stagger were black men, gambling in the dark on some lonesome street corner. Billy wins and ultimately takes Stagger Lee’s ten-dollar Stetson hat. Stagger, in a fury, goes home and gets his forty-one and returns to kill Billy Lyons. He finds him in a bar, and “shoots him so bad” that the bullet goes through Billy and shatters a glass in the barman’s hand. Billy pitches over, gouting blood. When Stagger reclaims his lost Stetson, it’s drenched in crimson, but he places it on his head anyway. The sheriff arrives and there is a bloody gun battle. Stagger Lee is killed in his scarlet Stetson hat.
At this point in the song, most versions I’d heard reiterated, over and over again, what a bad man Stagger Lee was and ended. But Steck continued on:
When the ladies heard they shot him,
That they shot old Stagger dead,
They came to his funeral dressed in black and
Some was dressed in red.
Stackerlee came to the devil
To identify poor Billy’s soul,
But the poor boy was absent.
He had burnt down to charcoal.
Now the devil heard a rumblin’,
A mighty rumblin’ under the ground.
Said that must be Mister Stack
Turning Billy upside down.
But ole Stagger heard him talking,
He had named him by his name.
He jumped up by the devil and
Killed him, just the same.
If this had been the extent of the verses of Otis Steck’s rendition, I would have been happy, as I’d heard them before but without this exact phrasing. I was very pleased and surprised when Steck continued on:
Now old Stagger, he was kingly,
And they set on him a bloody crown—
He stood up in the dark there,
In the darkness underground.
But they kept him from Billy Lyons
And Stagger craved for Billy’s soul.
His eyes burned like yellow lanterns
And mouth burned like charcoal.
And across all them fire pits,
Across that burning plain,
Old Stacker grew so angry
He called out each soul’s name.
They twisted, and they rolled,
And they thrashed they souls around,
But King Stagger knew their secrets
And burned their candles out.
He’s a bad king,
He’s a bad king,
Stackerlee.
Something grew in me as he sang in the failing light. Some sense of order, descending. It’s said that music is a ritual with the power to transfor
m both the singer and the listener. As he sang, Steck’s stature grew in my mind, his mouth became cavernous and dark, and I felt a heaviness descend on me. Hairs stood up on my arms, and I looked at Bunny and Vester, who both seemed enthralled by Steck’s music. When he finally let the song die, I raced to the SoundScriber to make sure the acetate had cut properly and played it back.
It was such a small sound compared to what had come before, echoing out above rows of cotton. A flight of crows erupted from the far tree line and wheeled in unison, passing overhead and then diminishing into the west for what seemed like an eternity, their caws drowning out the sound of the disc playing. When their avian vocalizations finished, the recorded song ended. He’s a bad king, Stackerlee.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Mister Steck,” I said, “where did you learn those verses?”
“Aw, back in Arkansas,” he said. “I’ll tell you something true. Made some mistakes in my days and spent some time at Cummins farm.”
“Cummins State Farm?” I asked. The correspondence I’d had with Jack Darcy of the Darcy Arkansas Folk Society had mentioned I could record numerous field hollers and secular songs there among the inmates.
“That’s right,” Steck said, and took another drink. He leaned back in the folding chair at an angle—the whiskey was obviously doing its work—and thumbed a match into life and lit a cigarette. He drew on it heavily.
Bunny went to the Studebaker once more and returned with our camp lantern. It wasn’t fully dark yet, but would be soon, and I slapped at my neck and my exposed forearms where my shirt cuffs had been rolled back, leaving streaks of blood.
“Them skeeters like the white meat,” Otis Steck said. Vester hooted, slapping his knee.
“That seems true,” I said. “Though I do not know why they’d discriminate in this manner.”
“Discriminating!” Otis said. “Ain’t that rich. They picky eaters but it’s a matter of freshness, if you catch me, sir.”
A Lush and Seething Hell Page 19