"Well, he played Harp, I don't know nothin' 'bout no Monica"

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The lawyer's comment was that if the McTell monies were substantial - "large enough to attract attention if word gets out - which it would if they had to pay them over to the state," and, if Peer hadn't paid anyone on the account for decades - "Probably since McTell's death in 1959 and maybe even before that," - then "this combination could be a professional black eye to Peer; indicating they couldn't be bothered finding someone they owed lots of money to. That's not the kind of attention to detail that potential co-publishers are looking for. Add in the obvious racial overtones and the cultural importance of McTell's work, and you have a nasty publicity problem for Peer."

You run around with funny people you get a streak of it up your back

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There were "Big Truck" or "Big Trunk" blues, with the man trying to get a "trunk" into the woman's "closet" or a "truck" into her '"garage." Generally the trunk is too big and there is considerable "pushing and sqeezing ..." before they get it in. There were blues about dentists, with the usual idea that the girl should open wide because "... it isn't going to hurt a bit." Some of the women singers did blues about their "Handy Man" or their "Kitchen Man," usually with a verse that explained that they loved their handy man or their kitchen man for his various skills and they described exactly what he could do. Usually a handy man was described as being able to "haul ashes," a folk expression for being able to make love, but his other skills usually were only vaguely related to an open expression of sexuality. A typical blues was something like Sarah Martin's "Kitchen Man." She describes a Madam Buck who has a kitchen man who is leaving her. The woman says that she loves his "turnip tops," his "hash," his "cabbage;" that she can't do without him because "... that boy can open clams," and swears that "... No one else is going to touch my hams."

Extraordinarily Wild and Unaccountable : Charters Double Bill

 

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"Any musician who accompanied himself was construed as a country blues singer.So it was that Sam Charters' Country Blues (1959) devoted most of its pages to artists like Broonzy (a fixture of Chicago blues),Lonnie Johnson (a St. Louis bluesman),and Leroy Carr (an Indianapolis musician) [also Blind Lemon, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins etc-JQ].Although it was the focal point of his work,Charters made no attempt to explain the characteristics of 'country blues' : he merely brandished the term as a superlative.He concocted a dualism (country/city blues) in much the same way that folklorists would create diametrical opposites of 'folk' and 'pop' music, the one profound, the other shallow. The 'country blues' are described as 'intense', 'intensely personal', 'moving', and 'sensitive', as compared with 'dull, obscene party blues,' or 'thin, suggestive or tasteless blues'. The country blues singer has 'emotional depth' and 'earnest, deep sincerity. 'He is something like a noble musical savage."-Stephen Calt, I'd Rather Be The Devil.

                                        
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