As more of those old recordings came to light, it became apparent that Henry Thomas was a singular and important figure. He left behind a total of twenty-three issued selections which represent one of the richest contributions to our musical culture. It’s goodtime music reaching out from another era: reels, anthems, stomps, gospel songs, dance calls, ballads, blues, and fragments compressed in a blurring glimpse of black music as it existed five generations ago. As an old man among young recording artists, Ragtime Texas left behind a look at our roots like no one else’s. It’s the songs that came out of the shifting days when freedmen and their children were remaking their lives in a hostile nation.
Henry Thomas’ guitar is rudimentary, but he plays with a thrusting drive that evokes a country dance. He uses one of the most ancient of all instruments, the panpipe (or quills or syrinx, as it is variously known) to punch out melodies. His songs continually underscore the lasting irony that much of our most expressive and satisfactory poetry has been composed by an illiterate and uneducated people. And, along the way, Henry Thomas sheds new half-light on a long-lingering mystery: the origin of the blues. He offers no quick solutions, but rather leaves us to our own devices after providing varied examples of the blues idiom at several early stages of development. He returns more than once to what is perhaps its most archaic form:
Look where the sun done gone
Look where the sun done gone
Look where the sun done gone, poor girl
Look where the sun done gone.
For me, the question of who it was that I stopped on the street that day in 1949 has never been answered to complete satisfaction. It cannot be settled, although the doubt has diminished—though not ended—since seeing copies of the original advertisements for his records “John Henry” and “Texas Easy Street Blues,” which appeared in black newspapers when the records were first released. One of these advertisements contains a mottled photograph and the other a line drawing of a figure with the same physique and that egg-shaped head I first saw near Houston’s Union Station.
In any case, through the happenstance of having made his twenty-three records in the late 1920s, Henry Thomas becomes a relic from the past, one of that flood of leftover things that we must come to treasure, or else discard because they clutter up our world. As with any relic, it’s helpful to know the context and the role it placed in its own time, but ultimately the relic must stand on its own—holding our attention because it is a rich human testament that continues to please us.
“Growin’ up in Texas, I heard a lot of blues singers—black cotton pickers singin’ the blues. I always loved the blues and played a lot of blues. It’s so close to country music—so many country songs are three-chord blues.”—Willie Nelson
JANIE AND TEA CAKE
By Zora Neale Hurston
[From Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937]
Janie dozed off to sleep but she woke up in time to see the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark. He peeped up over the door sill of the world and made a little foolishness with red. But pretty soon, he laid all that aside and went about his business dressed all in white. But it was always going to be dark to Janie if Tea Cake didn’t soon come back. She got out of the bed but a chair couldn’t hold her. She dwindled down on the floor with her head in a rocking chair.
After a while there was somebody playing a guitar outside her door. Played right smart while. It sounded lovely too. But it was sad to hear it feeling blue like Janie was. Then whoever it was started to singing “Ring de bells of mercy. Call de sinner man home.” Her heart all but smothered her.
“Tea Cake is dat you?”
“You know so well it’s me, Janie. How come you don’t open de door?”
But he never waited. He walked on in with a guitar and a grin. Guitar hanging round his neck with a red silk cord and a grin hanging from his ears.
“Don’t need tuh ast me where Ah been all dis time, ‘cause it’s mah all day job tuh tell yuh.”
“Tea Cake, Ah-”
“Good Lawd, Janie, whut you doin’ settin’ on de floor?”
He took her head in his hands and eased himself into the chair. She still didn’t say anything. He sat stroking her head and looking down into her face.
“Ah see whut it is. You doubted me ‘bout de money. Thought Ah had done took it and gone. Ah don’t blame yuh but it wasn’t lak you think. De girl baby ain’t born and her mama is dead, dat can git me tuh spend our money on her. Ah told yo’ before dat you got de keys tuh de kingdom. You can depend on dat.”
“Still and all you went off and left me all day and all night.”
“ ‘Twasn’t’ cause Ah wanted tuh stay off lak dat, and it sho Lawd, wuzn’t no woman. If you didn’t have de power tuh hold me and hold me tight, Ah wouldn’t be callin’ yuh Mis’ Woods. Ah met plenty women before Ah knowed you tuh talk tuh. You’se de onliest woman in de world Ah ever even mentioned gitting married tuh. You bein’ older don’t make no difference. Don’t never consider dat no mo’. If Ah ever gits tuh messin’ round another woman it won’t be on account of he rage. It’ll be because she got me in de same way you got me—so Ah can’t help mahself.”
He sat down on the floor beside her and kissed and playfully turned up the corner of her mouth until she smiled.
“Looka here, folks,” he announced to an imaginary audience, “Sister Woods is ‘bout tuh quit her husband!”
Janie laughed at that and let herself lean on him. Then she announced to the same audience, “Mis’ Woods got herself uh new lil boy rooster, but he been off somewhere and won’t tell her.”
“First thing, though, us got tuh eat together, Janie. Then we can talk.”
“One thing, Ah won’t send you out after no fish.”
He pinched her in the side and ignored what she said.
‘“Tain’t no need of neither one of us workin’ dis mornin’. Call Mis’ Samuels and let her fix whatever you want.”
“Tea Cake, if you don’t hurry up and tell me, Ah’ll take and beat yo’ head flat as uh dime.”
Tea Cake stuck out till he had some breakfast, then he talked and acted out the story.
He spied the money while he was tying his tie. He took it up and looked at it out of curiosity and put it in his pocket to count it while he was out to find some fish to fry. When he found out how much it was, he was excited and felt like letting folks know who he was. Before he found the fish market he met a fellow he used to work with at the round house. One word brought on another one and pretty soon he made up his mind to spend some of it. He never had had his hand on so much money before in his life, so he made up his mind to see how it felt to be a millionaire. They went on out to Callahan round the railroad shops and he decided to give a big chicken and macaroni supper that night, free to all.
He bought up the stuff and they found somebody to pick the guitar so they could all dance some. So they sent the message all around for people to come. And come they did. A big table loaded down with fried chicken and biscuits and a wash-tub full of macaroni with plenty cheese in it. When the fellow began to pick the box the people begin to come from east, west, north, and Australia. And he stood in the door and paid all the ugly women two dollars not to come in. One big meriny colored woman was so ugly till it was worth five dollars for her not to come in, so he gave it to her.
They had a big time till one man come in who thought he was bad. He tried to pull and haul over all the chickens and pick out the livers and gizzards to eat. Nobody else couldn’t pacify him so they called Tea Cake to come see if he could stop him. So Tea Cake walked up and asked him, “Say, whut’s de matter wid you, nohow?”
“Ah don’t want nobody handin’ me nothin’. Specially don’t issue me out no rations. Ah always chooses man rations.” He kept right on plowing through the pile uh chicken. So Tea Cake got mad.
“You got mo’ nerve than uh brass monkey. Tell me, what post office did you ever pee in? Ah craves tuh know.”
; “Whut you mean by dat now?” the fellow asked.
“Ah means dis—it takes jus’ as much nerve tuh cut caper lak dat in uh United States Government Post Office as it do tuh comes pullin’ and haulin’ over any chicken Ah pay for. Hit de ground. Damned if Ah ain’t gointuh try you dis night.”
So they all went outside to see if Tea Cake could handle the boogerboo. Tea Cake knocked out two of his teeth, so that man went on off from there. Then two men tried to pick a fight with one another, so Tea Cake said they had to kiss and make up. They didn’t want to do it. They’d rather go to jail, but everybody else liked the idea, so they made ‘em do it. Afterwards, both of them spit and gagged and wiped their mouths with the back of their hands. One went outside and chewed a little grass like a sick dog, he said to keep it from killing him.
Then everybody began to holler at the music because the man couldn’t play but three pieces. So Tea Cake took the guitar and played himself. He was glad of the chance because he hadn’t had his hand on a box since he put his in the pawn shop to get some money to hire a car for Janie soon after he met her. He missed his music. So that put him in the notion he ought to have one. He bought the guitar on the spot and paid fifteen dollars cash. It was really worth sixty-five any day.
Just before day the party wore out. So Tea Cake hurried on back to his new wife. He had done found out how rich people feel and he had a fine guitar and twelve dollars left in his pocket and all he needed now was a great big old hug and kiss from Janie.
“You musta thought yo’ wife was powerful ugly. Dem ugly women dat you paid two dollars not to come in, could git tuh de door. You never even ‘lowed me tuh git dat close.” She pouted.
“Janie, Ah would have give Jacksonville wid Tampa for a jump-back for you to be dere wid me. Ah started to come git yuh two three times.”
“Well, how come yuh didn’t come git me?”
“Janie, would you have come if Ah did?”
“Sho Ah would. Ah laks fun just as good as you do.”
“Janie, Ah wanted tuh, mighty much, but Ah was skeered. Too skeered Ah might lose yuh.”
“Why?”
“Dem wuzn’t no high muckty mucks. Dem wuz railroad hands and dey womenfolks. You ain’t usetuh folks lak dat and Ah wuz skeered you might git all mad and quit me for takin’ you ‘mongst ‘em. But Ah wanted yuh wid me jus’ de same. Befo’ us got married Ah made up mah mind not tuh let you see no commonness in me. When Ah git mad habits on, Ah’d go off and keep it out yo’ sight. ‘Tain’t mah notion tuh drag you down wid me.”
“Looka heah, Tea Cake, if you ever go off from me and have a good time lak dat and then come back heah tellin’ me how nice Ah is, Ah specks tuh kill yuh dead. You heah me?”
“So you aims to partake wid everything, hunh?”
“Yeah, Tea Cake, don’t keer what it is.”
“Dat’s all Ah wants tuh know. From now on you’se mah wife and mah woman and everything else in de world Ah needs.”
PHOTOGRAPHER PETER AMFT ON J.B. LENOIR
Photographer Peter Amft got turned on to music during the early-sixties folk revival in his native Chicago. Around the same time, he began shooting album covers for Mercury Records, as well as the Chicago blues label Delmark. He became close friends with Michael Bloomfield, whom he photographed many times, in addition to Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Big Joe Williams, Willie Dixon, and other blues artists.
Back in ‘63, there were hootenannies all over Chicago. That’s when I first saw Steve Seaberg, at the No Exit Cafe. He would get down on one knee and sing and play ukulele. It was all very vaudeville—a mixture that included flamenco and blues, anything wacky. I was working full time as a commercial photographer’s assistant at the time. We did everything from naked ladies for Playboy to Hormel Ham billboards, often on the same day. We worked seven days a week, day and night, but it was a great learning experience for me. There was so much work to do, the photographer would let me do a lot of it, and I had free run of the studio.
Steve and his wife, Rönnog, knew I was a photographer. They asked me to make a little film with them of J.B. Lenoir. They could only afford to rent a 16-mm Auricon—just a cigar box with a lens. The sound recorder was a little suitcase with a handle, like a kid’s toy that only had an on-off button—very simple, primitive, probably from the fifties.
I hadn’t seen J.B. before. He showed up with a zebra-skin tuxedo and a funky guitar. We just stuck the Auricon on a stationary tripod, put J.B. in front of a white background with a chair, and turned him loose. There wasn’t a lot of preplanning or production. J.B. showed up with Sunnyland Slim and St. Louis Jimmy as an audience, we took our coats off, did the movie, and it was done. Like that.
We sent the film out and got it processed, and when I went to pick it up, there were two rolls and I had them spliced together. Then I borrowed my uncle’s big clunky projector, an old Bell & Howell. I was twenty-two, and my wife and I were living on Michigan Avenue in a big loft. J.B. brought his whole family over for the screening, and they loved the movie. It was in color, with sound. That was totally unheard of—that you would go to some white people’s house and they would have a color and sound movie of your uncle or son—J.B.—where he was playing. It was so startling.
We had a duplex, and J.B. and I went upstairs while the others watched the film over and over again. He told me he had written a song almost every day of his life, and he showed me a notebook of his songs. He had a poignant look on his face, talking about his friends who had died in the Korean War. He had written songs like “Eisenhower Blues” about his experiences.
We went downstairs, and I had him sit by the window light. I had my Rolleiflex camera on a tripod, and I took a deliberate double exposure of him looking happy—like he always did—and sad. J.B. had this very angelic quality, an innocence, to him. He was like an old-fashioned black guy you’d find waiting on you if you were taking the New York Central train and you were the stupid white person and the guy waiting on you had more dignity than you. He had an old-fashioned look about him. He sang in a real high falsetto, which was kind of strange. He was a special person.
J.B. Lenoir, photographed by Peter Amft the night of the screening of the Seabergs’ film
DRIVING MR. JAMES BY JOHN SZWED
September 1967: The bombing of North Vietnam had just begun; the Marines were still occupying the Dominican Republic; cities were still smoldering from a summer of riots; sit-ins were spreading across campuses; “Alice’s Restaurant” was on the radio; Lenny Bruce was dead; and me? I was in the fall of my discontent, teaching at Lehigh University, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and desperate to connect with the outside world. Somehow I convinced the university to let me stage a modest folk festival. The name act was the New Lost City Ramblers, but to me the secret star was the almost legendary bluesman Skip James, recently returned from the dead and living in North Philadelphia, fifty miles away. I heard him for the first time on a new album for Melodeon, a record whose antique-looking cover made it appear recorded in the 1920S. His voice was high and faint, his guitar precise and classical. To me it was as strange and beautiful as anything on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, a kind of chamber music from the Mississippi Delta.
The morning of the festival, I headed south in a VW van to pick him up at his house, where I found him waiting on the front porch, neatly dressed in hat and suit, the top button of his pants left stylishly unbuttoned. Driving out of the city, Skip said very little, and what he did say was whispered. His wife, Lorenzo (the niece of Mississippi John Hurt), did the talking for both of them.
Once we were at Lehigh, I introduced Mr. James to a small group of students seated under some pine trees on the side of a hill. He casually pulled out his guitar, lowered his head, and drifted into the strange muted cry of “Illinois Blues.” One song flowed into the next, as he played on, motionless and unamplified, in that dappled afternoon light of what someone later told me was the summer solstice.
Afterward, he and h
is wife sat by themselves, sharing fried chicken and jars of iced tea from a basket they’d brought, until it was time for the evening concert. When his turn came on the stage, Skip was a different man, sitting on a kitchen chair in the spotlight, chatting briefly between songs, explaining his arcane tunings, while the students—most of whom had never heard of him—cheered him on, especially after they realized that Cream’s “I’m So Glad” was his own tune. So it went for an hour, then two hours, as he plowed though his whole repertoire, the students with him all the way. As it drew close to midnight, the New Lost City Ramblers became restless backstage and let me know that somebody was going to have to get him off. They ignored my suggestion that they just walk onstage, reminding me that it was I, the chauffeur, who was going to have to cut that old man off and take the boos that were about to be showered on me. Backstage, I tried to apologize to Skip James, paying him in cash, counting it out slowly—but Skip took some care to let me know that it was all right, and his wife added that I should have told him to get off a long time before then.
“As a listener, I tend to go for the odd-metered performances: the weirder Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson tracks (‘Too Young to Know’ and ‘Your Funeral and My Trial’), all of Jimmy Reed, the unhinged Cobra sides by Otis Rush (particularly ‘Three Times a Fool’ and ‘It Takes Time’), and the best of the Delta masters: Tommy and Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Skip James. I’ve never been tempted to try and sing any of these songs (apart from the occasional stab at Sonny Boy’s ‘Help Me’ and a few Little Willie John titles). I wouldn’t know where to begin. Looking at a James Ensor painting doesn’t make me want to pick up a brush. I am just in wonder. I just don’t know how to get inside. Or is it ‘outside’? Skip James sounds like music from Venus most of the time.”—Elvis Costello
Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues Page 26