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Participation may vary. My name's mishki. Welcome everyone. With this program, I'm going to go back to interviews I conducted with three old men a quarter century ago. Back then, they were keepers of a dying flame down in the steamy Mississippi Delta. Three old black men steeped in the Delta blues. Men raised as kids in that oppressive culture of the Deep south long before the Civil rights movement. Growing up in the 1930s, deep rooted poverty tied these men and their families to the sharecropping economy. Long days, sun up to sundown, picking cotton from an early age, sometimes five or six years old. Each of these three men grew up at a different part of the Delta. And I visited them in different parts of the Delta. Tennessee, Arkansas. Mississippi. But most rural families in the Delta back in the 1930s shared the same life. Landless sharecroppers or tenant farmers on white owned cotton plantations, trapped in perpetual debt and perpetual deprivation. Yet despite the severe systemic restraints, black communities found release where they could singin with passion in a church, pouring out their soul or singing in a juke joint some old house at a crossroads in the endless flat farming land where a party would commence Friday at sundown and run till Sunday at sundown. A different kind of release. Yeah, that's where the Delta blues was born. A sound that would sweep across the world and alter music everywhere it went. For my trip down south to interview these three men, I started at the very top of the Delta. Memphis Tennessee. There I found the home of Robert Wolfman Balfour. I found him in a hot, steamy back room of his house with a scratched up electric guitar plugged into a tiny amp. We had a conversation with a lone fan. The only thing to cool us off in the 98 degree heat. When did you first start playing?
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B
Seven and a half years old. I learned how to tune it and learn how to pick up would I hear somebody play.
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A
But no one ever showed you anything?
- [04:30]
B
No, I taught my own self. I can't read music. I write my words down and sit down and pick my guitar, look at my words and pick my guitar and put my music to my words. Moved to Memphis in 6 to 8 from Red Bank, Mississippi. I went down on Beale Street. My wife kept telling me to go down there. I set a ride home all the time and play before I left the contract. We used to play at places where they sold whiskey. You know, open house all night, you know, White Lightning whiskey. You didn't get paid no money, holler, you know, just a little bit of something, you know, all you could eat and all you could drink. It was an all night thing from Friday until Sunday night. Cause everybody had to go back to the field on a Monday morning, you know.
- [05:14]
A
Now where was this?
- [05:15]
B
Mount Pleasant, Mississippi. Three or four houses right around in that area that you could go to during the weekend. Cause that's what they did, they sold which they run the gambling house.
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A
They'd work on the farm and then on a weekend there'd be just one long party and they'd have gambling there and moonshine. Were there other people who you thought were as good as you playing?
- [05:35]
B
You didn't have to know but one or two songs. Somebody played one song all night. One or two songs, that all you need to know. You know, people dance back then, I think a whole lot of jitty boogs and slow dance, swing dance, you know, and stuff like that.
- [05:49]
A
Would it get pretty wild there?
- [05:51]
B
Oh yeah, it was wild. And folks get to drinking and some of them get drunk and sometime they'd have fights. I worked on a farm, my mother's sharecrop there in Red Bay, Mississippi. And I worked on a farm there. I worked there until I was married when I was 20. The lady I got now, okay, what
- [06:12]
A
was the work like on the farm? What was at work?
- [06:14]
B
It was hard work. Plying a mule all day, you know, from sun up to sundown. You went to field in the morning time. It's got light enough for you to see. Planting your cotton, breaking the land where you can plant the cotton. And when I first started planting, I was 12 years old, we broke the land with mules. Then we rode up the road with the mules. Yeah. And then after you get your cotton planted where you had to chop it and also we went in time going to pick it, you know, in the fall. We did that with hands. When it open up, it's white. So you just pick it. Just like you might go in the field and pick peas, anything like that
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A
and put it in a bag, put
- [06:55]
B
it on a sack. You had a six foot sack, you had a nine foot sack and you had a four foot sack. Okay. Like kids small ain't can't pull no big sack. A little bit of kids maybe they fix them a flower sack. You know, there's something like flower which you eat. You know, my mother used to fix for us when I was little, you know, I couldn't pull no big sacks. A little boy, you know, in the field. So she'd fix that. Nothing but a little flower. 25 pound flour sack. Children be in the field when they wasn't nothing but just six, seven years old. They'd be out there in the field. Yeah, I was picking cotton when I was seven, eight years old. But I couldn't pick that moist until I got up some size, you know. When I got grown, I was picking 3 or 400 pounds of cotton because my mother, she was always sick. She was real sickly, so she was never able. She had asthma and a bad heart.
- [07:43]
A
And how about your dad?
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B
My dad died when I was 12 years old. I never had a chance to work around him too much.
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C
Okay.
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B
Cause him and my mother separated when I was about 5 years old.
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A
Did you ever see your father after you said?
- [07:56]
B
Oh yeah, my father used to come down there where we lived at on number four highway there where my mother lived at. And he used to come down there sometime. He'd take me back home with him on the weekend, let me stay all night, bring me back next day.
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A
Did he play any music?
- [08:09]
B
He used to play a little bit around the house there. You know, back then people used to have something like they call a dance, you know, and fish fry. He'd sit around, play the guitar and. But he never would let me fool with it until I got a certain size because he was afraid I might would bust it or something like that, right. So. But after I got up big enough to hold it in my lap, I wasn't big enough to hold it up right up right then. And he just lay across my Lap let me mess with a little bit till I got bigger. When I got, I say I was about five and a half, he started letting me try to pick it. That my first piece I learned how to pick was Baby Please Don't Go.
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A
Now a song like that, Baby Please Don't Go. Do you remember when you first heard something like that on the radio?
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B
I heard it long time ago on Grythonolia. You know, my mother had one of these old wind up Grythinoia and them big records and things. And then they had all them kind of records back then. My daddy used to pick it on the guitar. But that's the way I learned it by hearing, you know, when I was a kid coming up, I could hear anything and I wouldn't forget it, you know, I could remember it, you know. But now it take me a while to learn it because my can't. It's different when you get a certain age, you know, than it is when you're a kid. Yeah, kids can learn anything, right? Just like that.
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A
Can I hear a little bit of Baby Please Don't Go?
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B
Actually, can I pick a little bit? Okay, yeah.
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A
Sa. The Delta starts right here. Memphis, Tennessee. It follows the Mississippi river right down the border of Arkansas and the state of Mississippi. About 70 miles wide. It's on both sides of the river, moving south for about 200 miles. It's all farm country, flat. And this part of America belongs to black people. They cleared the forests and they turned this 19th century wooded swampland into the richest farmland on earth. They're the ones who toiled in the fields. They worked the cotton and the corn and they're the ones still there today. Mississippi is the poorest state in the nation, home to some of the most powerful people. Potent, heartfelt music to come out of this country in the 20th century. The delta blues. So many names stand out. Muddy Waters, B.B. king, Sun House, Johnny Lee Hooker, Lightning Hopkins. So many who were born there or lived there part of their lives, learning, soaking up the landscape, the sun, the sounds, the songs of the black sharecroppers. The sound of toil and pain and release. The music was sweet release. And for many, it was the only release there was alongside the painkiller of corn whiskey. Yeah, the Mississippi Delta. No stretch of acreage in America lays claim to quite so many musical ghosts. Tough, hard edged voices singing of sweet pleasure and deep suffering. And those ghosts can still be heard wafting across the endless farm fields, past abandoned homes, over the long flat terrain stretching out in all directions. Voices of black Men singing in a language all their own. A language from a different place, a different time. Drawing from experiences from few of us can ever fully understand. And yet we're drawn to it in the music of the Delta. You can feel the sun beating down. You can see the strong sweaty limbs, the squinting eyes, the sweat soaked clothing, the poverty, the fight, the pulsating energy, the struggle, the survival through song. And always, always, of course, the soul. That thing that ultimately attracts one to this music and to these extraordinary people. I went down to Tennessee and Arkansas and Mississippi a quarter century ago. To find the few remaining keepers of the flame. To talk to them before these voices disappeared forever. Have you ever told someone this is what blues is? And been able to put it in words?
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B
Blues ain't nothing but a feeling. I mean, it's an everyday thing, just a little anything. You can call it the blues, you know, because things happen to you, you get mistreated, they call that the blues. You know, your wife leave, your girlfriend quit you, they call that the blues. You know, you wake up in the morning time, you ain't feeling right. So blues have a lot of meaning to it, you know. It ain't no one or two things that you can't just really put one name on it, you know, Just a bad feeling. You're blue, something you can do. Sometimes I'm feeling bad or something. I can get on pick to get tired. Pick a piece too. Yeah, that's all it is, the blues. That's all the blues. That's what it's all about, See, like people back in the country like that, they used to work from dog to dog. People work so hard, they would get on some morning singing songs, you know, whilst they work. Some of the things I would be thinking, when I'm working, I'm tired of doing this, I'm gonna try something else. And I could tell you when I used to just sit around and play my guitar at home, I could see myself just leaving home, just walking and just. With nothing but my guitar. It'll make you want to do something, leave home or something when you get playing a guitar. I really will if you really get your man really in.
- [14:50]
A
Did you ever pick it up and leave?
- [14:52]
B
No, no, never did. One of the reasons, I guess because when I was a teenager, because my mother, she stayed sick all the time. And I was the oldest kid there, you know, so I didn't want to leave her either. I was the oldest one, you know, I have drove four horses to a wagon during the winter. They call it. They call It Puckwood. Haul it out the woods. I used to haul that down the winter for a guy. I used to drive up four horses to a wagon during the wintertime. Couldn't do nothing there. Haul that stuff out the wood to the highway, gravel road. Had some guys loaded on a truck. That's all I did during the wintertime. I was nothing but a boy about 15 years old. Yeah, I did that. I make that money and I go home, go to grocery store.
- [15:43]
A
Was there anybody else who ever played with you?
- [15:46]
B
I always played by myself. One place there in Red Bank Road there. A couple guys used to play there. Name was Cotton. One of them named Cotton, one of them named Pudding. Now, they would be there every Friday night, Saturday night, they'd be there all the time because they drank it a lot. But I slip out and go up there. My mother didn't know I go up that long. I slip off and go up there. Or they have guitars up there, they play. I want to be around with them guitar. If I drink. I wasn't gonna go in the house. She saw me a million times sitting on the woodpeck. I saw you out there on the woodpecker. What's wrong with you, boy? I said, oh, I just feel kind of sick. I just sit out there and kind of cool off. You can't fool your mama no way. She didn't know all the time that I'd be done drunk. I know you had been drinking. I never let her see me turn on the ball up and drink nothing. Never let her see me drink. That's one thing about it. I never let her see me drink. And then my daddy. My daddy drank. I mean, he drank it. When I would see him, he would be already drunk. He carried me with. Everywhere he went, he kept me with it. He used to put me on the wagon with him bale of cotton. But he never let me see him drink nothing. I never seen him with a half paint in his pocket. He'd have it in it. Don't see him. He'd be full, you know. And I have came home like that. My daddy, he got out the army. I don't remember when he got out, but he went to World War I. And when he come back from the army, he was drinking like that's the way he would drink like that. He get on the drink sometimes drunk, bail. He drank four or five days like that. And he'd be laying out in the way. He have a bale of cotton in the way mules would come home. The mules was trained they'd bring him home. The mules come up at that gate. They stand right there till somebody go down there. That day, he didn't have me come to and wake up. I mean, many, many times. Yeah, the mules trained. I really didn't bring him home. The mules come all the way from Harted spring with me and him in that wagon, he drunk and that bale of cotton and me that good lord were really with me and still with me.
- [17:50]
A
Got a note from a listener. It says, hey, Mishke. I was in a car accident. My neck was injured badly and my car was folded like a taco. The other driver's insurance company sent me a card, an actual Hallmark card. It said, thinking of you during this difficult time. There was a cartoon bear on it, and it was holding a balloon. Mishke. I did not want a bear with a balloon. I wanted my car not folded like a taco, and I wanted my neck fold fixed. So I called Bradshaw and Bryant the way you always tell people to do. Here's what happened. They were not so sentimental. I didn't get the bear with the balloons. I got no card. Bradshaw and Bryant looked at the greeting card, looked at me, and they said, we're going to need everyone's deposition. Things are going to get intense. Eleven weeks later, that insurance company sent me a check so large that I sent them a greeting card, a thank you card. It had a shark on it. It said, thinking of you, Bradshaw and Bryant. Learn more@minnesotapersonalinjury.com I'm Kiana, and I leveled
- [18:56]
C
up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like, I can't stop. I'm addicted. Start your free trial@shopify.com
- [19:24]
A
There's a moment every family knows. Dad asks the same question for the third time in an hour. Mom can't find her way back from the old country mailbox at the end of the long driveway. And you realize the person you love needs more than you can give them all by yourself. That's not failure. That's love reaching its limit. The Wellshire Memory Care center in Bloomington and Medina was built for this moment. They don't offer a wing of a nursing home. This memory care is not an afterthought The Wellshire does one thing. Memory care does it better than anyone in the state. Every hallway, every doorway, every garden path. Designed by people who understand how a mind with dementia or Alzheimer's actually moves through the world. It's the architecture of dignity. And it does not feel like a facility. It is not a facility. There's a coffee shop, a cinema, a barbershop, a salon, a library, a bar. Beautiful gardens. Real life still being lived. Just held more carefully. That's all. The Wellshire Memory Care Center. Because the people we love deserve a place built just for them. I leave Memphis the following morning. And cross the Mississippi river into Arkansas. Traveling the back roads for two and a half hours down to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. That's where I find Siddell Davis waiting for my visit in his wheelchair. Like Robert Belfor Sidel Davis also lives on the rough side of the tracks. Narrow street smaller than most alleys up north. Crumbling porches, torn siding, the yard covered in weeds. Chickens running around his neighborhood. There's no glass in Sidal Davis's living room window. It's just a hole in the wall out into the open air into a noisy neighborhood. Siddell Davis got polio quite early in his life. And he got it about as bad as one could and still live. It affected him from the neck down. He's in a wheelchair, his legs immobile. His hands twisted permanently into a half fist. It's astonishing that he can play the guitar at all. But he plays by wedging a butter knife into his right hand. And plucking the strings with the thumbnail of his left thumb. The knife pushes the strings down. And the voice, one of the few things not affected by polio. That is strong and it can pierce the walls.
- [22:23]
C
Here's the thing about where I see it now. Well, people had a lot of clubs here in the Delta. All around down south. I played in them kind of places. When I wasn't even allowed to go in them. As a boy, you know, you're too young. Back in them days, if you was a boy, they had all that gambling and women prostituting and all that stuff. They wouldn't let you come in there. Cause they know if you got hurt, they was in trouble. You had to get permission. They had to get permission for me to come in. They set me over in the corner someplace. I played, but I couldn't mix with the people. I had to stay to myself.
- [22:55]
A
What would they do when you were playing?
- [22:57]
C
Dance, dance, slow drag, two step, one step boogie. And everything. Jenny Bug, everything. Sure. Only thing was I couldn't mix with them until after I got up. Until I'm like 16 years old.
- [23:11]
A
How old were you when you first started playing there?
- [23:13]
C
12, 13, 14 years old.
- [23:16]
A
Must have felt pretty good to be able to be with those older folks.
- [23:19]
C
It was. Made me feel great, you know. I mean, it didn't make no money, you know what I mean? But still, you know, the money then was, I reckon, about equal, like it is now in a way, you know what I mean? Because you could do more with a dollar then back then. You do with maybe $20 now, see,
- [23:37]
A
did they sort of take you under their wing and kind of make an exception with you and say, okay, this is the only young guy we're going to let in.
- [23:45]
C
They always protect you. I mean, because if you with them growing older guy, well, they was going to protect you. Didn't let nobody mess around with you. They had them old rusty pistols and shotguns and stuff. They didn't line them stuff like that, boy. Around 15 or 16 years old. Why not? Women's gonna go looking around and not looking at them too, you know.
- [24:06]
A
You must have seen some wild things there.
- [24:08]
C
Oh, I've seen people get killed, seen people get cut, seen people get shot. That's just the way things was back in the days. They just drinking corn whiskey, Bootleg whiskey, they called it.
- [24:20]
A
Would they make it there?
- [24:21]
C
Yeah, make it on farm. 35, 47, half pint.
- [24:25]
A
Seems like with the blues, the Delta blues, there is an awful lot written about drinking, an awful lot written about women and an awful lot written about gambling.
- [24:33]
C
Yeah, that was the main thing. Women, gambling and drinking. What, Nothing else. Didn't know what to do. Well, the first thing I really learned how to play is a song was written and recorded by Roosevelt Sykes. 44 Blues.
- [24:50]
A
44 Blues was the name of it.
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C
Yeah.
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A
As in the gun.
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C
Yeah. Sam. Oh, my body pulls so long
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D
Till
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C
it made my shoulder soul. I wore my body for so long that I made my shoulder soul. If I ever find my sweet one ain't gonna wear my.44 no more.
- [26:13]
A
When you were making your living solely off music, where all were you playing?
- [26:16]
C
Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas.
- [26:20]
A
What kind of places were they?
- [26:22]
C
They called them honky tonks back then. See, they didn't call them clubs or none of them. It was honky tonk, Bauhausing and all that. See, that's what they called them.
- [26:30]
A
They'd be just on a. Intersection of crossroads.
- [26:33]
C
Yeah, intersection. Crossroads into small towns. The people all was in the big city. They come out to the smaller Places, you know. Cause a lot of things that you could do out in them small towns you couldn't do in the city.
- [26:45]
A
For instance, at 12 o' clock in
- [26:48]
C
a city, you had to get out. There wasn't two places closed down at 12. But now the people out in small places and everything like that, they open all night. So people leave the big city and go out there. Well, they could stay out all night. That's the way I was.
- [27:01]
A
These honky tonks, do you remember the names of any of them?
- [27:04]
C
Well, see, back in them days, if I'm Sedell Davis, the place was sea there. And if you was Jake or whatever, John. Well, I'm going to Jake's tonight. Everybody know what it was the place was named after you. If your name was Richard, say, I'm going to Richard's tonight. Well, everybody know where Richard was. It didn't make no difference. 20 miles now, 30 miles. Everybody know where Richard was.
- [27:27]
A
What would be in there? A bar on a stage or a bar on a corner.
- [27:30]
C
Wasn't on stage.
- [27:31]
A
No.
- [27:31]
C
See, we have maybe a table across a door. You walk up to the door, that table, buy what you want, you see.
- [27:37]
A
And the choice was corn whiskey or
- [27:40]
C
beer, home brew, bootleg whiskey and homebrew. That was it. I have a band over there playing. Two or three guys, maybe one guy playing. And they'd be selling their whiskey.
- [27:52]
A
Did you always play alone?
- [27:54]
C
No, I didn't always play alone. I never liked working alone. But I have did it many times. But I ain't never liked working alone. I worked with guys that had homemade instruments, you know what I mean? Just like a washtub. They make a base out of it, a barrel and make a base out of it. And have a broom that they would normally know, you know, on the floor, dragging the broom, you know. Not a guy would do that. Another guy would have a jug, you know, blowing a jug, anything they could find. They go in the kitchen and get the tops off the pots, you know, get the washboard and get the Nine falcon on, play the washboard and stuff like that. They didn't just always have music instruments. Whatever they could get their hands on, that's what they played. I've been to Holland, Amsterdam, I've been to Germany, I've been to Switzerland, I've been to Italy.
- [28:58]
A
I assume the music is pretty well received over there.
- [29:01]
C
It is. Much more than this. Much more. See, the people in Europe, they go for the blues more than people do here. A lot of people here don't pay it no money. People over there know more about blues than people live here. Even here in Arkansas, they follow that kind of stuff over there, but people here don't.
- [29:18]
A
And I take it, back then in the 40s, if you walked into one of these honky tonks, was there ever. Was it all black? Always.
- [29:25]
C
Most of the time back then was all black.
- [29:27]
D
Yeah.
- [29:27]
C
See, well, nowadays it's all white. Yeah.
- [29:32]
A
What do you make of that? All of a sudden, a shift from all black to all white for this music. Why is that?
- [29:37]
C
Well, I see it, and I don't think the black people really care about their Harris, you know, whatever, you know, their culture. I don't think they really care too much about it anymore. See, they left that, you know, when people left the farms, you know, a lot of people left that got in Chicago and New York, different, other places. They didn't even want people to know. They even came from the Delta. I don't know why, but that's. I met some people in New York at the Pepman Lounge. I played at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City there, 1:20. And I met a guy from red here in Arkansas. And he didn't want nobody to know that he's from. He's from Arkansas. And I met a guy at Providence, Rhode island, at a place called the Last Chance Saloon that I played in. Probably he didn't want nobody to know he was from Jackson, Mississippi. I don't know why, but is there
- [30:23]
A
some feeling that if you come from the farm country, that you're ignorant or something?
- [30:28]
C
I reckon that's what they think. I don't know, you know, really what it is, but I reckon that's what they think.
- [30:34]
A
And the city's supposed to be sophisticated.
- [30:36]
C
Yeah. You know, people like Chicago and Detroit and New York and all that. But you know what I mean, now, you find more blues there.
- [30:42]
A
Now, you would here, but then all of a sudden the white people. People embrace it.
- [30:47]
C
Yeah.
- [30:49]
A
Why?
- [30:51]
C
Well, I think they appreciate the black people's culture they have more than black people do themselves. From the way it seems to me, see the way it is like this. My audience everywhere I go is all white. Very soon you see maybe two or three blacks around. Two black people around, all white. My audience, I don't care was right here in Arkansas, just like I played last week, Little Rock. Okay? Arkansas play called the White Water. Well, I think I saw two black people in there. All rest were white and they didn't even have standing rooms, but all white. I don't know why, you know, but only thing I can see that they don't appreciate it or something.
- [31:37]
A
Does it bother you?
- [31:38]
C
No, don't bother me.
- [31:40]
B
Not at all.
- [31:42]
C
You know, bigger the crowd, better. I like it. I don't care what girl they are.
- [31:46]
A
That started to change. When? When did you start to see that change? Because you used. You used to play for all black audiences.
- [31:52]
C
When I first noticed that, it started to change something like 75, 80.
- [32:00]
A
You hear stories about the guys who first started playing rock and roll in the 50s. Going into the black places to learn how to play. That's the way they do coming inside, or if they were too young to come inside, just trying to sit outside and listen.
- [32:13]
C
They sit outside and look through the windows and stuff like that. If they knew where you live, they come to your house. I've had many of them want to learn to play what I play. And nowadays, most every white man, you see that, well, he wants to play blues, you know, Want to play like the black people play it, you know. Well, they make a lot of money doing that, you see. And then another thing, they just like that, you know what I mean? They. The trend just changed all the ways. One guy, well, he wasn't white. He was black. He was here. He was a young boy. He used to come to my house, sit around and try to play the guitar. And so the guy told me, you remember you taught my stepson and another boy how to play? I said, yeah. He said, well, that other boy, he living in North San, California now. He got a recording contract. So he done made about five or six recording. I said, yeah. He said, whenever you do come back on a visit, he want to look you up and find it. I said, well, you find me somewhere in Palm Bl, okay? Now, when them young guys, young white girls and all these on a Sunday that have a house full, they come down, they dance, and boys want to learn to play guitar. And they didn't have guitar, they played mine. I guess they learned what they want to learn, you know what I mean, by hearing me play, you know?
- [33:24]
A
Were you ever given a nickname or were you always just Cedell Davis?
- [33:28]
C
Sidal Davis is my nickname, you know what I mean? Because that's what my mother and family called me all the time. That's not really my real name.
- [33:34]
A
Oh, Sadelle Davis is not your real name?
- [33:35]
C
No, no. Most recording companies and stuff like that being show. But they don't want your real name. Most of the time, they don't want your real name. Sometimes they give you a name. See, my real name was Ellis Davis.
- [33:46]
A
Ellis Davis.
- [33:47]
C
Yeah.
- [33:48]
A
They didn't want the name Ellis.
- [33:50]
C
They want your nickname. Seemed to go better with recording. Any show business, right? It seemed to go better.
- [33:57]
A
That's how you end up with things like T, Model T, model 4.
- [34:00]
C
Know that? Not. Not his name. His name is James. They're like Whoopi Goldberg. That's not none of her name. Tina Turner. That wasn't under her name. Her name. Anime.
- [34:10]
A
Who did you like to listen to?
- [34:12]
C
Way back. Way back. Oh, God. Like Robert Johnson. I like him. He's real good. Charlie Patton.
- [34:20]
D
I like that.
- [34:20]
C
All them guys back there. Because they really put some in the blues that guys are still trying to do. They still trying to play like Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, all that.
- [34:29]
A
Robert Johnson gets an awful lot of credit for being the father of the Delta blues. Is that accurate?
- [34:35]
C
Well, I can say this much. Lot of blues players out there, but nobody mastered him. Nobody did what he did. My mother used to send me to the store on a Sunday morning. There used to be some people lived on Washington Street, a man and wife. And I don't know who other people were. They had bass viols and horns and drums and all that stuff. Well, see, they'd be practicing some Sunday morning. And she sent me to the store. I stopped there, you know, and listen to them play, you know. She said, boy, why you stay so long? I said, stow was crowded. And she found out that that's what was. What was the problem, you know. She said, what? No ST crowd? You up there. Them people out standing out there listening to music. Well, I sure was.
- [35:17]
A
Your mother must have loved that you played, didn't she?
- [35:19]
C
No, she didn't like me to play.
- [35:21]
A
Really. Why not?
- [35:22]
C
She say, you die and go to hell. You play blue. I said, well, you already in hell. No, you gonna die and go to hell. It look like me already in the hell. Now look how we working around here. He make, what, 12 hours a week? If that ain't hell, I don't know what it is.
- [35:37]
A
And was that the thinking of blues music? That it was devil's music? Yeah.
- [35:41]
C
Well, my mother used to tell me many times, you gonna die and go to hell. Well, I don't know, Mama. I don't know. I said, but one thing about I gotta do something. Yeah, but you don't have to do that. So what is I gonna do? Ain't able to work. I ain't able to get around what I'm gonna do. Find something.
- [35:57]
A
You remember the first time that you made enough money where you really said, wow, I'm making some money from playing music. This is good money, at least for the time.
- [36:05]
C
Sure, sure. I started messing around, playing a place over there in Mississippi. Called it Bonnie Blue. That's the name of the farm, you know. Bonnie Blue. When I was staying over there with my brother for a while. Go out there and play like on Saturday nights. And Sunday evening, Sunday night went out there and played and made me 40, $50. That was really big money.
- [36:28]
A
How much would you make for working a day on the farm?
- [36:32]
C
Sometimes two dollars and a half.
- [36:34]
A
So these guys who are sweating all day on the farm are getting two and a half bucks. And you find out you can play music and have some fun and get 40, 50 bucks.
- [36:41]
C
Sure, you gotta come get me. They come get me like on a Thursday night most of the time while I play a little bit. That Friday night, that's what I'll be doing all day Saturday, all night Saturday night, Sunday until something like 10, 11 o' clock on Sunday night. That's what I be doing. When I first started working out on the farm, I was five years old. Make a little sack, you know, hang on to pick cotton, put in there.
- [37:05]
A
Could you pick a lot of cotton at 5?
- [37:07]
C
No, I couldn't pick no lot. But you know, they'd have me out there anyway. And after I got something like 7 years old. Chapin Cotton didn't look good as they live.
- [37:16]
A
Do you remember those days pretty well?
- [37:18]
C
Remember real good. If you came along, you would have remembered them too. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough. I look back at it, it was tough. But, you know, a lot of things happened back then I enjoyed and I think about it. Nowadays you don't have that kind of enjoyment no more. Bunch of us guys used to get together, sit out in the yard, play guitar and drink beer and whatever. We could get corn and whiskey. Go to different people's house and do the same thing. You can't do that no more. Saturday night. Come on over to my house. Go to their house, man. Be a whole house full of them. Drinking whiskey and playing washbowl. Blowing hops and playing guitars. Plenty of girls and everything nowadays. Nothing like that no more. Kill a hog or some of them. Cooked up a lot of meat or something. Maybe they got some chicken and cooked the chicken or something. They enjoy themselves.
- [38:09]
A
What changed?
- [38:10]
B
What?
- [38:10]
A
What happened?
- [38:11]
C
People. People change people back in the day. They live more neighborly, so to speak, you know. But nowadays there's no neighbor. There's no. There's no friends no more. Like she used to be friends, but no friends no more, man.
- [38:24]
A
Do you have friends now that you.
- [38:26]
C
No, don't have it. No, things have changed. See, these days you have to pretty much stay to yourself because if you mix with people too much, you're gonna get in trouble.
- [38:37]
A
Sounds like in the old days. The work was harder, but the fun was better.
- [38:42]
C
Better. Had more players than back then. Every way you wanted to play, you had more players back then. And now you can't. All the animal players nowadays because you can't mix with the people.
- [38:54]
A
Do you remember any particular stories of a particularly wild night in one of those old places on the farm?
- [38:59]
C
Yeah, a place called out the Kings. I was sitting there playing Mississippi on the E.M. hewitt plantation. That's why I used to live. All right, well, I know them good. Katie and Taylor and all them. I know them but Buck Taylor and Boy Taylor, all that. I know all of them. You know what I mean? All right. Well, fool Ronnie, I don't know what happened, but Katie, man, whole man got into a bunk or wc, all right? They got into it some kind of way there and messed around there. They had a picket fence around the house. I know you know what pickets was? The old time pickets, you know, tall one, he went there and ripped him one of them pickets off the fence. Come back in the house and she had her back telling you she didn't see him. He drove back, man, hit her right across the backpack, bow. Sound like a rival. And shot. She turned around, man, they all got the fighting around, man. Man, people was running, every Russian. It looked like everybody got to fight. Well, I. You know, when you do that, you stay out of the way. You know, I sit over in the corner. I sat there. Old boy called Wilder Galley, he was playing with me. He said. I said, man, look up there. I said, yeah, look at that. You better stay out of the way. So, I mean, I'm just sitting in the corner and let them fight. They're all around the Brooklyn man's fence down. And then, you know what I mean, it's all over with. And here come a few of them come back laughing about it, you know what I mean?
- [40:22]
A
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- [41:30]
D
And to stay ahead, you need to
- [41:32]
A
see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, Filters ready to clog.
- [41:36]
C
H Vac on its last leg.
- [41:38]
A
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- [41:45]
C
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- [41:46]
A
Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop
- [41:49]
D
by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [41:54]
A
When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. The third and final day of my trip, I head back across the Mississippi river into the state of Mississippi, through towns that once housed legends Charley Patton, junior Lockwood, Elmore James, Howlin Wolf, Robert Johnson. All coming from one little part of the country. I pass the poor towns filled with liquor stores, fried chicken shacks, and I head to Greenville, Mississippi, home of T Model Ford. He waits for me on the dirt that suffices for a front lawn. On a block just off the main drag behind a funeral home. There are kids running around everywhere, barefoot, waving sticks, shouting, laughing, running back and forth across the street. T Model Ford yells at them, keeping them all in line, threatening to discipline them. He's in his 80s now, walks with a cane, sits in a metal folding chair, surveying the whole neighborhood.
- [43:48]
D
Get out of that mud, boy. Quit that stick down. Come out of that mud. Get back over here. Where they muddy at. Yo, they all call me Granddaddy. Hey, hey, y'. All. Come out of There y' all mess it up when you get in my van.
- [44:10]
A
Where were you born?
- [44:12]
D
I was born in for Mississippi. What'd I tell you about that chunky boy? Come here. Don't you see I'm talking business? I catch you chunking again, I have to pull this belt off.
- [44:26]
C
You know me, better be lucky than me.
- [44:30]
D
Yeah, I was born in Florida, Mississippi. That's about three hours drive from here. And y' all going up there and play. We got three children. First one was a girl. She died. I got two boys. The oldest one, he's 55 now. Second boy hit me here about a year or two ago, busting my eardrum. I can't have here. I don't know what was wrong with him. He jumped on me. I was in the shape of men now. I couldn't bite. He knocked me down. Blood come all out of me. Stella was ripping. Stella got him off him. The oldest one, he was in there. He had a son got drowned down there. And that's why we were down there. He got drowned at 17 years old. I didn't know him. I had never seen him. Didn't know he had no children. We got out there and went to the funeral home and everything. He looked just like it, Daddy. You know, we got to playing car. He thought he was the king down there playing beating everybody. So I got a guy we beat, everybody said, oh, he got angry. He waiting to catch the drop on me a long time. And he popped me, knocked me down. Hey, what y' all doing over there? Who that beating on that thing? I had my pistol in my van up on the sea. If the Lord let me got my hand on it. I'd have killed him right there. Cause I was his daddy. He wasn't my daddy and I hadn't did nothing to him. I said, look, you stay out of my face longer day. You live long. If I die, don't you come to my funeral. And I damn sure ain't coming to your funeral. I ain't had nothing else to say to him. Sin.
- [46:37]
A
Did you have brothers and sisters?
- [46:39]
D
My brother's dead. I had three brothers and one sister. My brother next to me, he died.
- [46:47]
A
How did he die?
- [46:48]
D
He take him sick, I reckon. Daddy beat us so much, Daddy beat us. My daddy got me in bad shape now, but I'm still living.
- [46:59]
A
Would he beat you just for any little thing?
- [47:02]
D
Anything. Anything. Somebody say, when I got big enough to know what whooping was, I never know. He'll whoop me with clothes on. He stripped me buck naked, go out in a little scope of wood. Where we living back there hicked the wood woods and all that. He'd go out and cut him down when I'm. He could switch with the butt end that big. Come back in that long thing about that long. Every time when he get through whooping man, he have a stove. He'd be down the stove just like you. Walk in the room where he beat me. See where all the splendor thing flew out of it. He beat me with him. Sometime he changed in with him and beat him.
- [47:49]
A
You didn't go to school at all?
- [47:50]
D
He didn't let me go to school. Day like today. I was hauling wood with a wheel bar. Winter time. No shoes on my foot. Find them on big truck ties and tie a knot in them and turn it wrong side in there to my foot. Get me some old big socks and things. Rag and grab them up. Who you thought I had on boots. And be one of big old truck attunes up to him, wave water and moving snow and all that.
- [48:22]
A
In all your life, you've never read a thing.
- [48:26]
D
Never read nothing, never spelled nothing. I worked every day of my life until I got upgrown suddenness. Till Sundays again. I know they go to play with no children. And through the week working day, if it was too wet to plow. He sent me to the field. Cut corn, stalks, bushes, pick them up and pile them and burn them. Cut that and rake it up and pile and bring it. Creek bank down there, look just like this yard down there. I kept it just as clean down there.
- [49:02]
A
At what age did you start having to work as a kid?
- [49:05]
D
Six years old. He started me plowing the mules at six years old. I had to plow it to grown men.
- [49:14]
A
That was for corn or cotton.
- [49:16]
D
Corn and cotton plowing, running mills out the same way I come through the rough way. Man, my daddy was mean to me when I come in the world. When I was a little bitty baby. I turned on him, though. When I hit my 20s, I smelled my manpower then I was a powerful man. I stayed powerful until I broke this
- [49:42]
A
hip one time he went to mess with you and you for the first time struck back.
- [49:48]
D
Robin went to his house. Daddy, me get out of the chair. That's all. To pull your ass out of that goddamn chair right now. I hit me up my manpower. I said, mama, what you shaking from?
- [50:01]
A
So was he hitting her too?
- [50:03]
D
He was before I got grown. When I say something to him.
- [50:17]
A
As t model plays the guitar, a group of young black men drive by Listening to rap music. T model looks up, gives them a sneer. I gotta ask you something about that music they're playing right there. What do you think of that stuff those young folks are listening to? It's not blues.
- [50:46]
D
No. Is rock blues.
- [50:49]
A
It's what?
- [50:50]
D
Rocks blues.
- [50:52]
A
Oh, rot blues.
- [51:03]
D
Now that's what you call hard blues. Hurting blues. You play that kind of stuff and women can't stand anymore. And if you got a woman, you gotta hit that road and see what she's doing where she at.
- [51:20]
A
Did you have trouble growing up with whites?
- [51:24]
C
Yeah.
- [51:26]
D
Get tied to wagon horses and drag you. They come, got my grandpa out of the house. My mama carried him to the woods to beat him up. They put a sack over his head in the house and led him out the front door. All of them was on horses and they carried him to that swamp. And where they gonna whoop him at? Had him tied up. Had a crook sack over his head.
- [52:02]
A
What were you on a chain gang for?
- [52:04]
D
For killing a man.
- [52:05]
A
What happened there?
- [52:06]
D
He stabbed me in my back.
- [52:08]
A
He what?
- [52:09]
D
Stabbed me in my back. Missed my spine. About that for stabbed you? Yeah, in my back. I didn't even know who he was.
- [52:17]
A
Why did he do that?
- [52:18]
D
That's what we don't know.
- [52:20]
A
You were just standing there and he.
- [52:22]
D
I was sitting down. It was four girls there and we sitting at the table. This guy, he was standing at the front door. Seemingly be no trouble. I said, hey, that one of y' all boys? He said, no, we don't know. I said, look like he. He wants to drink a beer. I said, I'm buying. Why don't y' all get him a glass and call him. Yeah, tell him, sit down and drink beer with y'.
- [52:46]
B
All.
- [52:48]
D
One of them called him. He come to the table and he looking down at me. I guess I made him mad. He's out with a knife and cut at me. I was fast as lightning. Anyhow, he missed me that time. I knocked his from it. I broke the run when I broke the run. So many peoples in there, I couldn't get out. And he won't come up behind me like a hot piece of iron. When he hit me, I kept a knife and I whirled. When I whirled, I stuck him right there. I cut his goose, killed him right there.
- [53:25]
A
What did you have in your pocket? A switchblade?
- [53:27]
D
Yeah, you could buy them old switchblade. Parking lot that long for 25 cent. I kept a knife the day I got a knife.
- [53:35]
A
The first time he struck you, what did he hit you with?
- [53:38]
D
He didn't get to hit me. I was so fast when he cut at me. He cut at me like this.
- [53:42]
A
Oh, the first time he missed.
- [53:44]
D
Yeah, he missed. And I grabbed that chair. And when he got in reach, I whammed him across the head with that chair. Knocked him to his knees. He got up and had his knife. I broke the room. So many people I couldn't get out of the way. He just come up, hit me. Red table feel like a hot piece of iron. When he hit me, blood was all over the floor and cut his guzzle. Then I got away. I stayed gone about three days. And I'm in a big field. Cotton peel. I caught the truck down out of town at the railroad track coming that evening. And they had the police planted up there for me.
- [54:25]
A
Weren't all those people in the room able to be witnesses that it was self defense?
- [54:29]
D
I was a Mississippi guy in Tennessee. Now they hell on a Mississippi guy in here. They hell on a Tennessee guy. That son of mourner sent me to Tennessee on chain game. He whooped me that evening. That was a rough bunch.
- [54:49]
A
Where was this at this time?
- [54:51]
D
Humboldt, Tennessee.
- [54:52]
A
Were you chained together?
- [54:54]
B
No.
- [54:54]
A
Each of you had a ball and chain?
- [54:56]
B
Yeah.
- [54:56]
A
Okay. And then you'd be out on work crew with guys guarding you on horseback.
- [55:01]
D
Yeah.
- [55:02]
A
Prison uniforms?
- [55:03]
D
Yep.
- [55:04]
A
Were they?
- [55:04]
B
No.
- [55:05]
A
Striped ones.
- [55:05]
D
Yeah. But I was old man. You grabbed me. You better know what you doing. I was something else.
- [55:25]
A
Something else, all right. A life like that and you start to see where the blues might find a home. T Model Ford, Sadell Davis and Robert Wolfman Balfour. What all that music did for these guys now long dead and gone is impossible for someone like me to know. Maybe it was just comfort. Maybe it was salvation. Maybe something in between. But it's hard to separate the music from the lives, the men from the music. Or the Delta from this extraordinary legacy. Sedell Davis, T Model Ford and Robert Belfor can be found on the Fat Possum record label. As for the Delta, it's where it's always been. Still sort of stuck in time. Never quite feeling like the rest of the country. I'll never think about it again after this visit without thinking about that powerful sense of both its tragedy and its beauty. Which I guess is how I've always viewed the blues itself. Tragic and beautiful. Thanks for listening, everyone.