I’ve been a fan of Bessie Smith for as long as I
can recall. My mom had her records when
we were kids. Last night, listening to
all that Roy Eldridge I’d written about, I came upon a tune I’d never heard
before: "Jazzbo Brown from Memphis
Town." Sharing it with the likely
suspects, a dear old friend wrote back and told me I needed to listen to
Memphis Minnie, a blueswoman of stature whose tombstone he and his wife and
paid their respects at a few years back.
Listening to Lizzie Douglas (a.k.a. Memphis Minnie) from Algeris,
Louisiana now. Fabulous. Some beautiful slide-guitar on this track
“Pickin’ the Blues.” Born in 1897, the
oldest of thirteen children she was playing guitar on street corners for dimes
in Memphis by the time she was thirteen.
That’s only a few months older than my older daughter, which is utterly
impossible to equate. Within a few years
she was touring the south with Ringling Brother’s Circus. 独立自主[1] by choice.
Writing now, pausing, to consider that life. How tough you’d have to be as a young black
girl touring the south with the circus in 1916, all by yourself. You were either rough or got used up. And indeed there are host of stories of her
pistol packing, knife flashing, toughness, to compliment the grit in her voice
and the pain in her guitar bends.
She went on to record over 200 sides and her blues tale was ultimately
one of can-do empowerment, winning cutting contests against male bluesmen in
Chicago, and signing autographs with flash bracelets made of silver dollars
when black women were mostly out in the fields.
Unlike her mother she had no children, married three times and lived her
life independently. The tombstone my
friend visited was, it seems, paid for by Bonnie Raitt, which only increases the
respect I already had for that other blueswoman.
How much she, and me, and the United States and the world, all
benefited from the artful articulation of the blues. Minnie, who died in 1973 was, alas, never
properly honored during her later life.
Looking at the many images, she had a poised, knowing smile and what
looks to have been a broad pair of shoulders and some rather “hot” pants for a
performer from the 20’s. I like the one
photo where her hair looks like a torch set off to the left, aflame. A goddess messenger from Olympus, a woman
with a guitar and ready to play it. So
glad to meet you Ms. Douglas.
Meanwhile another Greek god, Plutus, (aka Mammon), the god of wealth,
smolders a bit more dimly in today’s news.
The world has long suspected that bankers receive disproportionate
compensation for the mental and certainly physical exertion involved in their
efforts. Today’s NY Times had an article
discussing China’s start and stop effort to curtail “shadow banking” on the
margins of China’s formal low interest banking.
Mr. Yao Jingyuan a former China state statistics official summarized the
situation colorfully; suggesting bank heads in China had the rough add-value of
canine highwaymen:
“Banking in China has become like a
highway toll system,” Yao Jingyuan, the former chief economist at the state
statistics agency, said late last week during a speech at Nanjing University,
according to a report in The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper.
“Banks charge every time money goes through them.”
“With this kind of operational model,”
Mr. Yao added, “banks will continue making money even if all the bank
presidents go home to sleep and you replaced them by putting a small dog in
their seats.”
Fees for doing nothing. Well
paying, powerful roles that require no real agency. Staffing government positions
with animals was Caligula’s trick. This
pending “privatization” of the Chinese economy will invariably continue for now
in this start-stop fashion.
It’s enough to make you want break off and do it all by yourself. And this throw-in-the-towel mood is high-tone
on both sides of the Pacific this morning.
We’ve got a settlement, or the trappings of one, in Okinawa to move the
U.S. base to a new landfill, elsewhere in the archipelago. Washington and Tokyo were apparently happy
with the accord. The Okinawans however,
who’ve only been “Japanese” since 1879, are talking about secession. The Okinawa
governor, Hirokazu Nakaima held is nose when he signed the document and
suggested he was still skeptical that it would work. Other Okinawans called him a traitor. US defense guarantees are important for
Japan, but Okinawans feel that costs outweigh the benefits. If they really want attention, the Okinawans
should strike up a conversation with Beijing.
The islands were a tributary kingdom to the Qing Dynasty before Japan
ever laid claim. I’m sure China would be
happy to dust off their claim to the island chain if the islanders have had it
with US protection.
Meanwhile they’re stopping Google and Apple
busses back in San Francisco. The latest
bubble continues to expand and feisty SF’s on the fringe of the party aren’t
going to let the peninsula become a super-rich ghetto, without a fight. People there all calling for the break up of
the mighty golden state, into five smaller states. This or secede all together. This has long the call from the fringe
movements in Texas and a popular idea up in Portland and Seattle as well. Something about the ability to talk about it,
or even vote on these questions is essential to let off steam.
And that works as long as the assumption is that
it is a fringe concern, with no real chance of success. If California or Texas, or Oregon really
voted to secede, would the U.S. allow such a thing? Rather unlikely. We stared down this question once before and
resolved it with no small amount of violence. “one union, indivisible.” Says the Pledge. The “right” to secede is certainly not
enshrined anywhere. And China certain
likes it that way. They like the lessons
of the Civil War. They reference it, when
ethnic minorities push for independence here.
It must be taking everything they have though to “not interfere in other
countries affairs” when they see the secessionist talk in Okinawa, or indeed,
in California. We don’t return the favor
when things get hot in Xinjiang or Tibet.
Perhaps we would if they had the chance to vote on it.
Meanwhile, its only 10:30 in the morning but Memphis Minnie is drunk
as a lord, both feet planted on the ground, one hand strumming, the other on
the throat of her guitar singing “Drunken Barrel House Blues.” It’s enough to make your think of that other
battle of yore, Prohibition:
If you listen to me good people, I’ll
tell you what its all about
If you listen to me good people, I’ll
tell you what its all about
Well this good stuff is here, and its
just come now
Catch me drunk in the morning, don’t say
to me one mumblin word
Catch me drunk in the morning, don’t say
to me one mumblin word
I can tell you all about it, and I ain’t
gonna tell you nothing I heard.
Aw play
Well I believe I’ll get drunk. Tear this old barrelhouse down.
Well I believe I’ll get drunk. Tear this old barrelhouse down.
Cause I ain’t got no money but I can
hope on out of town
Give me one more drink. Drink of that ball and fun.
Give me one more drink. Drink of that ball and fun.
And I’mma tell everything, soon as I get
back home.
Get me a stein of beer, if not a drink
of gin
Get me a stein of beer, if not a drink
of gin
I feel myself getting sober, I want to
get back drunk again
[1] dúlìzìzhǔ: independent and autonomous (idiom);
self-determination / to act independently / to maintain control over one's own
affairs
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