Every
morning when I’m back from the gym I wake up the ladies and get to work
preparing some breakfast for them.
I’ve taken it upon myself to orchestrate this particular phase of the
day with female blues from the 20s and 30s. The blues is a fundamental fabric of the American cultural
experience. If you want to
understand most recorded music of the last century, these are the underlying
melodies, this is the underlying feeling that explains most of what
follows.
I search for Cheerios in a bowl with raisons. Cup of 2% milk on the side, so they
aren’t wonky by the time they descend.
Peel back a banana, cut open a mango, toast and butter an English
muffin, set it all out. Get the
coffee started for mom. And all
the while the scratchy, 30s sound fills the morning with its warm, particular
invocation.
Bessie Smith is the standard, the apex in my mind for
what the expression of this initial flowering. My mother had two double albums of hers when we were young and
that music has fortunately been part of my aural landscape ever since. I can recall transcribing the lyrics to
“Black Mountain” for my students when I was a high school teacher in Brooklyn
and presenting it to them. After Bessie
there are the other names I’ve long known like Ma Rainey and Alberta Hunter
then there is everyone else.
Now, worries about royalty payments mentioned yesterday
not withstanding, I have been enjoying the slow discovery of some of these
luminous ladies, breakfast by breakfast.
I’ve written about a few of them, like Memphis Minnie and Mamie Smith,
and Sippie Wallace and Ida Cox.
But I hadn’t heard of Lucille Brogan and I have Rido to thank for
linking her in there next to Ida Cox.
Fine then, we’ll throw on some Lucille Brogan this morning.
Good morning ladies. Make sure you eat that mango. You need some vitamin C. I have no idea where your homework is. That’s your responsibility. I know honey, there must be something
wrong with the coffee maker. It’s
coming out so slowly. Then, from
over the din, I heard a man singing on the cut in an almost hushed tone about
“bitches.” Hmm. I listened a bit more closely and sure
enough, he was talking about bitches.
Right. Well then, off you
go ladies. Have a nice day.
I went in the other room to listen again and found
reference to the tune on line.
There is in fact a raw version of the song that Lucille herself sings; “Shave Em’ Dry” that is about as filthy as a ditty could be. http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/30/shave-em-dry-a-totally-filthy-song-from-1935/ Be sure to scroll down for the lyrics
transcribed below. 色胆包天[1]， Lucille knows what she wants.
No need to ponder the humorous double entendres of
Bessie Smith who wants ‘sugar in her bowl’ when listening to “Shave Em
Dry.” It’s all quite clear. I guess I hadn’t realized that all
those words were in popular usage back then, but of course they were. And as the article suggests this is
what it must have actually sounded like in a juke joint after everybody’d had
their gin and whiskey, in places where police never patrolled and people took
risks and had fun with candor.
And you think of people like Lenny Bruce who’d was
hounded to the point of suicide for uttering things far more tame, twenty-five
years later. The MC5’s who
had their classic live album pulled from the shelves in 1968 for the unfiltered
intro at the beginning of “Kick Out The Jams”, or the first time I’d heard The
Sex Pistols sing “Bodies” from 1977 and counting up the five or so times the word
“fuck” is used in that song and thinking, as a thirteen year old might, that
this was quite something.
Lucille’s raunchy candor antedates it all, including the
lewdest gangster rap that speaks to this feeling most directly, by at least
fifty years, reminding us there is really isn't anything new under the sun. It is perhaps appropriate that she is
interred in the Lincoln Memorial Park in Compton, California, the soil from
which would spring NWA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Bogan
I’ll save the sharing of the transcription with my daughters’ however, for some other decade.
I’ll save the sharing of the transcription with my daughters’ however, for some other decade.
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