Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues

by Peter Guralnick

  Race record sales fell as the decade drew to a close. Although about five hundred blues and gospel titles were released each year from 1927 until 1930, the number of copies of each record pressed declined sharply toward the end of that period. The sales decline has been attributed to black poverty in the Depression, but this explanation is insufficient, for the Depression came to the Black Belt farm country at least six years before the stock market crash of 1929. Rather, as the industry retrenched it adopted several economy measures that worked against securing a continuing supply of downhome blues singers—measures that initiated a self-fulfilling prophecy. The expensive field trips were cut back severely. Professional singers with wide repertoires and practiced efficiency promised to be the most productive, as studios came to operate on assembly-line techniques, processing songs very quickly. Under these circumstances, for example, one take instead of two became normal procedure. As long as their records sold reasonably well-Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe were selling consistently in the early 1930s—it was foolish to take chances on unknown singers or to keep issuing records of established performers, like Blind Blake, whose sales figures suddenly dropped. Although the industry continued to issue downhome blues records, and although new singers like Big Bill Broonzy, Bumble Bee Slim (Amos Easton), and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson established their reputations in the 1930s, the intense activity was over.

  Black Swan’s marketing approach was more refined than that of OKeh, who incorporated urban jive lingo into its ads.

  There was a redefinition of the downhome style, as the younger singers felt the influence of recordings and as jukeboxes began to displace live entertainment in the juke joints. Solo singers accompanying themselves on guitar seemed archaic, though some (like Blind Willie McTell) would continue to record, and others (like Robert Johnson, Tommy McClennan, and Robert Petway) would break into the race market. If the guitar had been the major downhome blues instrument in the recordings of the 1920s, the piano replaced it in the following decade. As Bessie Smith’s generation of vaudeville blues singers aged, the featured spot they had held was taken over by the jazz band itself, and singers became attached to bands, instead of the reverse. There was a sharp decline in race titles issued, both in overall quantity and as a percentage of all records issued. But in the Black Belt, juke parties continued, and downhome musicians with portable instruments were still in demand to provide entertainment at them. When, after World War II, small record companies sprang up, breaking the major companies’ virtual monopoly, they found plenty of black singers accompanying themselves with guitars. And some of the more successful ones, like Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, sounded very much like their counterparts twenty years earlier—after their electric guitars were unplugged by folk music enthusiasts.

  LET’S GET DRUNK AND TRUCK: A GUIDE TO THE PARTY BLUES BY JAMES MARSHALL

  Since that immortal day in 1927 when Blind Lemon Jefferson decided the critter his pud most resembled was a black snake—and got the biggest hit record of his career out of it, “That Black Snake Moan”—sex has sold plenty of blues discs. In the years before World War II, blues records concerning sex, a.k.a. “party blues,” possibly comprise the largest portion of the recorded body of blues. (Sociologists theorize this is because many of the parents of blues singers actually may have engaged in the sex act—but this is merely a hypothesis.)

  The biggest blues hit of the late 1920s was a stompin’ ode to pussy entitled “It’s Tight Like That’ (1928) by Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) and Georgia Tom (a.k.a. Thomas A. Dorsey, who a few years later would zip up his pants for Jesus and invent modern gospel music, composing “Precious Lord” among other valuable, tax-free copyrights). “It’s Tight Like That’ was covered by dozens of blues and jazz artists, ranging from Louis Armstrong to female impersonator Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon, In addition, it inspired such answer songs as the Mississippi Sheiks’ “Loose Like That” (1930) and Tampa Red’s own “It’s Tight Like That #2” (1929), among others. That same year, Georgia Tom teamed with Jane Lucas for “Terrible Operation Blues,” one of the strangest and most flagrantly obscene party blues of all time.

  New Orleans-born guitar virtuoso Lonnie Johnson always knew how to make a buck, and in the early years of his six-decade career he cut “It Feels So Good” (1929) and “Wipe It Off” (1930), both of which are as bawdy as the titles sound. Bo Carter (né Chatmon), a member of the Mississippi Sheiks (whose “Sitting on Top of the World” was one of the biggest blues hits ever), was responsible for the Sheiks’ “Ramrod Blues” (1930) and “Bed Spring Poker” (1931). Post-Sheiks, Carter pursued a career based on single-entendre smut like “Banana in Your Fruit Basket” (1931), “Pin in Your Cushion” (1934), “My Pencil Won’t Write No More” (1935), “Pussy Cat Blues” (1936), “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me” (1936), and, of course, “The Ins and Outs of My Girl” (1936). The guy was shameless!

  Blind Boy Fuller, one of the greatest and most popular of the rural-blues singers, recorded “Truckin’ My Blues Away” (1936) and “She’s a Truckin’ Little Baby” (1938), coming a clever double entendre (with truckin’ standing in for fuckin’). Fuller also cut the downright blunt “I Want Some of Your Pie” (1929) and the rhetorical number “What’s That Smells Like Fish” (1938), as well as others equally focused below the belt. Even tortured soul Robert Johnson took time out from playing hide-and-seek with Satan long enough to invite his honey to “squeeze my lemon, baby, till the juice runs down my leg” in “Traveling Riverside Blues” (1937); his lines later were appropriated by Robert “Percy” Plant of Led Zeppelin, who sounded quite stupid singing them.

  Kokomo Arnold, a moonshiner and guitar player, cut some truly fine dirty discs, including an intense reading of “the dozens,” the African-American folk game that consists of insulting one another’s family. He called his 1935 number “Dirty Dozens.” Earlier, in 1929, the similar tune “The Dirty Dozen” had been a hit for Speckled Red, who recorded “The Dirty Dozen No. 2” and “No. 3” in successive years. Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, as well as Lonnie Johnson, also cut “The Dirty Dozen,” in 1930, and Memphis Minnie did “New Dirty Dozen,” but none were as great or as graphic as Arnold’s later version. Perhaps Arnold’s finest moment—certainly his most tasteless—was his 1935 recording of “Busy Bootin’,” a tune that would eventually find its way into rock & roll’s repertoire via Little Richard, who cleaned it up and recorded it as “Keep a Knockin’“ in 1958. Arnold’s version included the lines: “I heard you knockin’ about twelve o’clock/But I had your mammie on the choppin’ block/Keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in/I’m busy bootin’ and you can’t come in.”

  Double entendres abound in the party blues.

  Women, especially the classic blues singers of the twenties and thirties, were not immune to recording party blues. In one of her most memorable performances, the great Bessie Smith bemoaned the fact that “I need a little sugar for my bowl,” inviting the men folk to indulge in her bowl of jelly (“I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” 1931). Also for Columbia, she cut “Do Your Duty” and “I’m Wild About That Thing,” both of which were equally uninhibited. In 1929, Clara Smith waxed her version of “It’s Tight Like That,” as well as a ditty entitled “Ain’t Got Nobody to Grind My Coffee.” Needing no further explanation is Barrel House Annie’s “If It Don’t Fit (Don’t Force It).”

  The bawdy and prolific Lil Johnson recorded several versions of “Hot Nuts (Get ‘Em From the Peanut Man),” not to mention such 1929-1937 sticky classics as “Rock That Thing,” “Sam the Hotdog Man,” “Was I Drunk?,” “Let’s Get Drunk and Truck,” “Rug Cutter’s Function,” “Meat Balls,” “Take It Easy Greasy No. 2 (You Got a Long Way to Slide),” “You Stole My Cherry,” and “My Stove’s in Good Condition.”

  The majority of blues record buyers in the twenties and thirties were reportedly women, and judging from the numerous discs directed specifically at th
e “sportin’ woman” market, we can assume that many of these records ended up in houses of ill repute. Among them: Little Laura Dukes’ “Jelly Sellin’ Woman” (1929); the aforementioned Lil Johnson’s “Anybody Want to Buy My Cabbage?” (1935); and Georgia White’s “I’ll Keep Sittin’ on It (If I Can’t Sell It)” (1936) and “If You Can’t Get Five, Take Two” (1936). Adding to the canon, Bessie Smith recorded two tunes about pimps: “My Sportin’ Man” (1929) and “Hustlin’ Dan” (1930).

  For my money, the pinnacle of both the classic-blues form and the party-blues style is an unreleased (until the mid-seventies) version of “Shave ‘Em Dry” by Lucille Bogan (a.k.a. Bessie Jackson and also attributed to Lucille Brogan), cut in 1935, which includes the following truly inspired couplets:

  I got nipples on my titties

  As big as the end of your thumb

  I got something between my legs

  Make a dead man come. Oh daddy

  Baby won’t you shave ‘em dry

  Won’t you grind me baby

  Grind me till I cry

  I fucked all night and the night before

  And I feel like I want to fuck some more …

  Oooh daddy

  Baby won’t you shave ‘em dry

  Ohhh fuckin’ is the thing that takes me to heaven

  I’ll be fuckin’ in the street till the clock strikes eleven

  Baby, shave ‘em dry

  Grind me, daddy, grind me til I cry

  Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell clapper

  And your dick stands up like a steeple

  Your goddamn asshole stands open like a church door

  And the crabs crawls in like people

  Oooww … shit!

  Baby won’t you shave ‘em dry

  A big sow gets fat from feedin’ corn

  And a cow gets fat from suckin’

  If you see this pork

  Fat like I am

  Goddamn I got fat from fuckin’

  Weeoow—shave ‘em dry

  My back is made of whalebone

  And my cock* is made of brass

  And my fuckin’ is made for work in’ men’s Two dollars

  Great God you can come around and kiss my ass!

  The most popular party blues of the 1920s was “It’s Tight Like That,” written by Georgia Tom (Thomas Dorsey) and Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) in 1928.

  Memphis Minnie and her husband Kansas Joe bemoan hard times of a different sort, in an advertisement for their record “She Wouldn’t Give Me None.”

  Bogan seemed to have had a one-track mind, also cutting “Bed Rollin’ Blues,” “Skin Game Blues” (both 1935), and the sapphic “Women Won’t Need No Man” (1927).

  In the years following World War II, as the blues market evolved from race records to rhythm & blues, and the electric-blues style was forged in Northern cities by John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, the nature of party blues changed, from blatant to coy; the years 1946 to 1954, which directly preceded the rise of rock & roll (cleaned-up R&B), represent the golden age of the double entendre.

  The rock & roll era ended even the more subtle dirty blues—at least for a while—since record labels didn’t want to expose their new audience, middle-class white teenagers, to such gutter-minded material. In 1955, for example, Little Richard took “Tutti Frutti,” an old tent-show standard about sodomy (original lyrics: “Tutti Frutti/Good bootie/If it don’t fit/Don’t force it/Just grease it/And make it easy”), and turned it into a raucous but innocent teenage nursery rhyme, ushering in the new era.

  Though the party blues went underground during the rock & roll years, it survived into the sixties and seventies, occasionally surfacing, as with Chick Willis’ “Stoop Down Baby” (1971) and Willie Dixon’s “Pettin’ the Baby” (1972).

  It resurfaced with a vengeance in the eighties with Clarence Carter’s surprise smash hit “Strokin’“ (1986), which sold a million copies just as the CD began supplanting the 45-rpm record. Hip-hop has proudly continued the party-blues tradition, with highlights including 2 Live Crew’s “We Want Some Pussy” (1987) and “Me So Horney” (1988) and Khia’s “My Neck My Back,” and Too Short’s answer record “My Balls My Sack” (both 2002).

  Today, the party blues are alive on what’s left of the chitlin’ circuit and on Southern radio stations like New Orleans’ WODT, which plays nothing but filthy blues records. Unfortunately, radio conglomerate Clear Channel recently purchased WODT and dozens of other tiny blues stations in the South, leaving one to wonder how long these stations will keep such earthy sounds on their playlists. One thing’s for sure: Just as people will never stop having sex, recording artists will never stop singing about it.

  REMEMBERING ROBERT JOHNSON By Johnny Shines [From The American Folk Music Occasional, 1970]

  I met Robert in 1935 in Helena, Arkansas, through a friend of his and mine who had played piano with me in Hughes, Arkansas. I never did know this fellow’s right name, but everybody called him “M.&O.” He often talked to me about Robert and how good he was, and he wanted the three of us to get together and jam some. So we went to Helena to meet Robert. M.&O. had heard that Robert was in Helena.

  It was a worthwhile trip—I met a friend, someone who liked to travel and play music as well as I did. When Robert and I first met, I was twenty years old, and I would say that he was about twenty-two or twenty-three.

  Now, we didn’t decide to team up. We just went places together and played together. The fact of it was that I was the bad penny, I stayed on Robert’s heels, and at that time I would follow anyone who had a run, a riff, or a chord that I wanted until I got it, if they were anyways friendly at all.

  Through M.&O. we struck up a good friendship, but while we were there Robert left town. He went over into Mississippi and, if it hadn’t been for M.&O.’s knowing how Robert was, I would still be waiting for him to come back!

  Then I met him again in Memphis. That was my home and I wanted to be anywhere but there. So Robert was telling me about how he had to go to Dallas to make some records, and I told him “let’s go,” but he had a ticket and I didn’t. We went as far as Texarkana, Arkansas, and I told him to go on, I would catch up to him soon, and I did. I caught him in a place called Red Water, Texas. Robert had made his records (Note: This would have been in 1937, as Johnson recorded in Dallas on June 19 and 20 of that year), and we had a lot of fun. He would play them for me and I would learn them.

  We worked Texas until the cold weather began to set in, then we headed for the southern part of Texas. That’s when I found out that Texas was a cotton country; I had thought Texas was only a cow country. Robert and I came back into Arkansas as far as Little Rock. I can’t recall just what happened, but my mother was in Arkansas not too far from Hughes and I ended up there. Robert went on, but I stayed on in Hughes. One night I came in and was putting my guitar away when a girl came up to me and told me that a fellow was in my bed who said he knew me real well and could play like she had never heard before. I asked, “What did he play?” When she said guitar, that did it! I knew it was Robert.

  We worked around there together, and most of the time individually. What I mean by that is that there were very few songs that Robert wanted to play with anyone, so we mostly played in turns. Hughes was a small town, but if anything was going on anywhere it was there. We made the paydays at Stuttgart, Cotton Plant, Snow Lake, and many other places, together and sometimes separately. If we both were in Hughes at the same time we shared the room, or whoever was there on Monday paid the rent…

  Since Robert was the peculiar person that he was, you would have to say that his love life was very slack, or open. You see, no woman really had an iron hand on Robert at any time. When his time came to go, he just went. I never could see how a man could be quite so neutral. I have seen him treated so royally that you would think he would never depart from this kindhearted woman that would do anything in this world for him. But how wrong can you be?

  There were two guys over [to] Jersey
that had heard about Robert and me being in New York, and by some magic they found us and wanted us to go over in Jersey to play for them. That was right up Robert’s alley. At the time Robert and I were going with two girls in New York.

  So we—Robert and I—left New York and went to New Jersey with these guys to play for them, and for two weeks we didn’t think to write, but by the same magic the girls found Robert and me. Being the silly ones that they were, they wanted us to go back with them. Robert would have no part of this: He was ready to go South, North, or West, but not back to New York-and the way we were living, you would think any person in his right mind would want to get away from that place. Don’t get me wrong. We were making good money; the people were going for what we were putting down, and we were really unloading. But these girls, they were loaded and offering us everything we wanted, but Bob treated them like they were just two old friends we once had known.

  Now, look, please don’t let the way this is being said disillusion you at all. Robert was far from being a sissy, and sometimes was too forward. Even men’s wives were fair game for him.

  Let us change the scene to Arkansas.

  We were having quite a time in this little town where people gathered every night to gamble, drink, and dance, or whatever employed their minds to do for their pleasure. We were playing regularly in this get-together joint every night, and this specific night Robert saw this girl and wanted to meet her. He found another girl who knew her and got this girl to introduce them.