the Bucket-of-Blood, the Upholstered Sewer, that's where you heard jazz

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Some guy came in for some innocent diversion, only he had about a grand on him. We had about six gals there, all sizes and all types. They worked on a percentage, so many drinks - phonies - drunk a night, so much earned. Well, this unlucky guy comes in. I strike up a tune and the big parade starts. First one gal sidles up to this fall guy; he doesn't give her a tumble. Then another, and still another. By this time he's downed several and is more amiable. Soon he latches on to one he likes. You know these girls could promise strange worlds with their eyes - it didn't pay to gaze too deeply. Well, he invites one of the gals to drink with him, and soon she's warming him up, and he buys me one - and then she invites one of her "girl friends" to join her - and pretty soon it's one big happy family, with our friend for the afternoon buying drinks for the house, about ten of us, and the drinks comin' so fast that nobody got a chance to really drink except, of course, our indiscreet friend. And somehow he passed out and had to be assisted upstairs. Just before my shift was up, he awoke - refreshed, but very short of dough. Very short. He was very outspoken about it, but no one knew where it had strayed, except - "Remember, you were buyin' everybody drinks - remember?" And so he started drinking again, and fell off one of the stools. This time the dishwasher helped him up, but somehow his hand got caught in this man's pocket. But the man with the grand (minus) wasn't that drunk. He put up a squawk. So there was nothing for Old Man McGovern to do but fire the dishwasher. So he got his hat and coat on and with his head hanging low, walked out - out, past the front window to the side door that also led back of the bar (partitioned off) to the kitchen, where I later saw him back at work, washing dishes.

"Dogface, Jet Pilot of Jive, Fatman Smith, Rockin' Lucky ..."

 

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Above all other subjects there is in blues a preponderance of lyrics about sexual love, or merely sex. A complex language of metaphors, often domestic or culinary, camouflaged a multitude of sexual references. ‘I want my biscuits in the daytime and my jelly at night,' declares one singer. 'My stove's in good condition, this is the stove to brown your bread,' his woman replies. A swaggering list of the singer's physical attributes was common, with women no less than with men. 'I'm a big fat woman with meat shakin' on the bone, and every time I shake it a skinny woman leaves her home.' Sexual virtuosity is the subject of scores of blues and the singer played a game with the censor when he sang The Dirty Dozen or Shave 'Em Dry.

to sing pornographic numbers to the habitués of 'drag parties'

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Recalling the success of Empty Bed Blues, Bessie made three sides with Lang and Williams which deliberately exploited their pornographic content. 'Race' terminology appears here and there in I'm Wild About That Thing, but such pathetic words as, 'I'm wild about that thing, yell out jing, jing, jing . . .' give the lie to their inclusion. Of similar quality is You've Got To Give Me Some with its animal comparisons, whilst the final number, Kitchen Man, though distinguished with a better tune is remarkable primarily for the extreme crudity of its metaphors. Though such material has its apologists it is hard to justify the sad stuff of these songs and the methodical manner in which they were bracketed together and purveyed. Did Bessie enjoy recording such material? She was too much of an artist not to give of her best in all she did, however poor the content.

BLUES SINGING * BLUES DANCE * HOT DANCE * PREACHING

 

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During the classic blues period, the three major companies advertised extensively. They would describe the content of the record, the qualities of the singer, the exceptional dedication of the company - all in the most lowdown imitation-jive-talk prose. A full-page Columbia advertisement in the Chicago Defender for 19th July 1924 said 'Wow- but Bessie Smith spills fire and fury in Hateful Blues, on Columbia record 14023D'. The smaller print went on 'Talk about hymns of hate - Bessie sure is a him-hater on this record. The way she tells what she is going to do with her "butcher" will make trifling fellows catch express trains going at sixty miles an hour. The music is full of hate too. You can almost see hate drip from the piano keys. Fury flies off the violin strings. Every note is a half-note. No quarter for anyone.' And above a list of other Columbia releases the copywriter declared, 'Having a phonograph without these records is like having pork chops without gravy- Yes, indeed!'

Sportin’ class o’ women runnin’ up and down the street all night long

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Memphis Minnie sits on top of the icebox at the 230 Club in Chicago and beats out blues on an electric guitar. A little dung-colored drummer who chews gum in tempo accompanies her. Midnight. The electric guitar is very loud, science having magnified all its softness away. Memphis Minnie sings through a microphone and her voice - hard and strong anyhow for a little woman’s - is made harder and stronger by scientific sound. The singing, the electric guitar, and the drums are so hard and so loud, amplified as they are by General Electric on top of the icebox, that sometimes the voice, the words, and the melody get lost under their noise, leaving only the rhythm to come through clear. The rhythm fills the 230 Club with a deep and dusky heartbeat. Memphis Minnie’s feet in her high-heeled shoes keep time to the music of her electric guitar. Her thin legs move like musical pistons. She grabs the microphone and yells, “Hey, now!” Then she hits a few deep chords at random, leans forward ever so slightly over her guitar, bows her head, and begins to beat out a good old steady downhome rhythm on the strings - a rhythm so contagious that often it makes the crowd holler out loud. - Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, January 9, 1943

a sexy growl that gradually rose to a series of wild honks and screams

 

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blues queens celebrated freedoms in no uncertain terms: “No time to marry, no time to settle down,” Bessie Smith sang, “I’m a young woman, and ain’t done running ’round.” And if their current lives still involved trials and troubles, blues provided a way to speak out: Smith threatened that if her man interfered with her affairs, “I’m like the butcher right down the street, I can cut you all to pieces like I would a piece of meat.” Ma Rainey sang of the harsh realities of domestic violence, describing a man who would “take all my money, blacken both of my eyes, give it to another woman, come home and tell me lies.” But she also sang about finding happiness in lesbian culture, dressing up in “a collar and a tie” to go out with “a crowd of my friends / They must have been women, ’cause I don’t like no men.”

couples rubbing against each other in drunken, snaky dances

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James Cotton would recall the Waters band being booed when they opened for Vaughan at Washington’s Howard Theater—but at the rowdier rock ’n’ roll shows, Waters did just fine. This was a time when Wolfman Jack was broadcasting from the Mexican border, and one of his typical segments would segue from Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans singing “Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah” to Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire,” then into a rap that would go something like: “Here’s Elmore James and his funky-funky slide guitar. Makes me want to get naked every time I hear it, baby…and I wantcha to reach over to that radio, darlin’, right now, and grab my knobs!”

'Get the fuck away from me. I never heard of such shit.'

 

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She had no expectation of making herself acceptable then, and her contempt for those who tried to conform was profound. Later in life her income would have enabled her to live in style with other successful black entertainers on Long Island, but she had no desire to join them. The black word for those who took on a white style of life was dirty, and Bessie never used the word without dislike. In turn, successful blacks disliked Bessie, because they felt her behaviour endangered their own image of themselves. The crudity of her language, and the unpredictability of her moods, made her seem like a part of the street life they wanted to forget. Bessie continued to enjoy that life: its food, its home-made liquor and its uninhibited parties. Essentially, she was refusing to acknowledge the class system the blacks had set up which put the white world at the unreachable top of the tree. She knew it was a system which had rejected her once and for all when she was thrown out of the chorus line for having too dark a skin. 

jazz music intoxicates like whisky and releases stronger animal passions

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As I started up on the bandstand, some tall black gal with a disgusting afro and great big ear rings jumped in front of me with a brand new switchblade knife. She was so tall that she was standing over me. Boy, did she look tough. She said, ‘You and the rest of them bitches over there at the table, took our table and I’ll see to it, that you never do it again to anyone else.’ How Bessie got there so fast and knocked the woman down, I don’t know, but when it come to fighting, she is the best. She grabbed the woman’s arm that had the knife in her hand and twisted until the knife flew out of her hand. I grabbed the knife. Bessie started fist-punching. She knocked the woman’s wig off and Uncle Sam’s eagle was not as bald headed as that bitch.