'Twixt Midnight and Day- Binarism, Blues and Black Culture

'Twixt Midnight and Day: Binarism, Blues and Black CultureAuthor(s): Paul OliverSource: Popular Music, Vol. 2, Theory and Method (1982), pp. 179-200Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852981 .

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'Twixt midnight and day: binarism, blues and black culture

by PAUL OLIVER

Well the blues come to Texas lopin' like a mule Well the blues come to Texas lopin' like a mule You take a high brown woman man she's hard to fool

You can't ever tell what a woman's got on her mind Man you can't tell what a woman's got on her mind You might think she's crazy 'bout you she's leavin' you all the time

She ain't so good looking and her teeth don't shine like pearls She ain't so good looking and her teeth don't shine like pearls But that nice disposition carries a woman all through the world

I'm goin' to the river gonna carry my rocker chair Well I'm goin' to the river carry my rocker chair

have the worried blues right here

I think I heard my good gal callin' my name Hey hey good gal called my name She couldn't call so loud but she called so nice and plain

Actual key Ab = 128 (initial), 156 (final)

I was raised in Tex-as schooled in Ten-nes-

A

-see I was raised in Tex - as

schooled in Ten-nes-see

Now sugar you can't make no_ fat - mouth out of me-

Said a woman act funny quit you for another man Yeah a woman act funny quit you for another man She ain't gon' look at you straight but she's always raisin' sand

179



18o Paul Oliver

These stanzas come from one of the best-known of all blues recordings of the 1920S, 'Got the Blues' by Blind Lemon Jefferson: best-known, that is, among black communities of the period and still recalled by many of their older members over fifty years after its issue. It was not the first authentic 'country' or 'downhome' blues on record but its appearance in mid-1926 marked a significant change in the policy of the recording companies. A blind street singer from Dallas, Texas with a high, even strident, voice was found to have an appeal to the 'Race' not only in his home state, but throughout the rural South and in the northern cities. Between March 1926 and September 1929, shortly before his death in a Chicago snowstorm, Blind Lemon Jefferson made nearly a hundred blues titles. Almost all of these were in the blues form which had become standardised some while earlier - possibly as a result of the popularisation of sheet music blues by W. C. Handy and others before World War I.

With the success of Jefferson's recordings, other black singers were encouraged to audition in the South and were sent north to record for Paramount at Port Washington, Wisconsin. Meanwhile major con- cerns like Columbia, Okeh, Brunswick and Victor sent field recording units to Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas and other locations to scout for and record local singers. Scores of blues singers were discovered and recorded this way; hundreds of others were to appear on record in subsequent years. Though various forms of black song were included in their repertories, the blues was by far the most popular, and large numbers of 'blues singers' used no other structure for their composi- tions.

Just a year after Jefferson's first record, Sam Collins, reputedly from McComb, Mississippi, recorded 'The Jail House Blues', the first of around a score of his issued titles. It was typical in that it was in the familiar twelve-bar, three-line blues form; it was typical, too, in that it was about an event that had happened to the singer, or one which he had imagined or projected himself into so that it became a personalised narrative.

When I was layin' in jail with my back turned to the wall When I was layin' in jail with my back turned to the wall I could lay down and dream I could hear my good gal squall

Lord she brought me coffee and she brought me tea Lord she brought me coffee and she brought me tea Fell dead at the door with the jailhouse key

I'm going down to the courthouse see the judge and the chief police Goin' down to the courthouse see the judge and the chief police My good gal fell dead and I sure can't see no peace



Binarism, blues and black culture 181

Actual key E

= 114 (initial), 136 (final) A I t I t t

I'll tell you what I'll do an' I sure God I won't tell no lie

Tell you what I'll doo an' I

sure God_ ain't gon' lie I b'lieve I'll

lay down take mor - phine and die

lay down _ take mor - phine and die

These examples were quoted by Jeff Todd Titon (Titon 1977) as two of some four dozen items which he cited as 'a representative sample' of the two thousand or so titles of 'downhome blues' that were issued between 1926 and 1930. As his purposes were different from mine, I felt that his selection could be accepted, and imposed as a discipline on a theory about the fundamental appeal of blues to the black community. This theory was presented as a paper to the International Con- ference on Popular Music Research held in Amsterdam in June 1981, under the title 'Blues and the binary principle' (Oliver 1982). In that paper I endeavoured to show that, notwithstanding the use of three- line stanzas each of twelve bars, blues form, execution and content were structured on a dualistic basis, and that this was the root of their aesthetic appeal.

My intention here is to examine what the binary nature of blues may mean to the black community; or meant, I should say, for though I believe that the argument is applicable to the blues throughout its recorded history, with subtle changes reflecting changes in black society itself, my discussion in that paper and the present article is concerned with the span of time covered in Titon's book.

However, I must briefly summarise first what I mean by 'the binary principle', and secondly, the main conclusions of my earlier paper. What I term the 'binary principle' is the universal tendency to classify the world of physical experience, of perceptual and psychic phenomena, of values and judgements, indeed all aspects of life about which we reason or for which we need to account to ourselves in some way, by making dualistic distinctions. Sometimes these are in the form of polarities: literally, as north/south, metaphorically, as 'politically



182 Paul Oliver

poles apart'. All people are aware of dramatic distinctions between night and day, hot and cold, living and dead, and many will couple them with associations: night, cold, dead may be 'on the one hand'; day, hot and living 'on the other'. Qualities and values may also be considered in a system of pairs: good/bad; courage/cowardice.

As Edmund Leach observed, 'binary oppositions are intrinsic to the process of human thought. Any description of the world must discri- minate categories in the form "p is what not-p is not". An object is alive or not alive and one could not formulate the concept "alive" except as the converse of its partner "dead" ' (Leach 1962, p. 3). Many societies classify the world in a totally binary way. To the Mapuche of Chile the controlling principle is one of 'Left' and 'Right' and hence all symbolic and other values are ascribed to one or the other: night, sickness, hunger, speech, below, sin are all 'left hand'; day, health, abundance, ritual language, above, expiation are all 'right hand' (Faron 1962, p. 154). The concept of 'dual organisation', of societies which have structured themselves on the binary principle, has been described by numerous anthropologists - Paul Radin on the Winnebago, for in- stance (Radin 1923). The question whether dual organisation is too simplified a concept for the complexity of the social structures has been raised by Claude LUvi-Strauss (Levi-Strauss 1963), though he acknow- ledges it nevertheless, in Le Cru et le Cuit: The Raw and the Cooked (Levi-Strauss 1969). No doubt the structures of societies are far more complex than the aggregation of binary oppositions, but this does not deny the universality of this kind of classification. What bearing has it on the arts - on, say, poetry or song? Take this, perhaps familiar, example: Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim; and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge; and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. (Isaiah 32:1-4)

The quotation is from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 32, but it could have been from any one of a hundred chapters in the Old Testament. Notice the parallelisms within which repetition is hidden by varied phrasing and imagery: 'a man shall be as an hiding place . . . and a covert ... the eyes of them that see . .. the ears of them that hear . . .' This pairing of images and duplicating of phrases or whole verses was noted by Bishop Lowth two centuries ago (Fox 1975, pp. 101-2). The researches of Newman and Popper sixty years ago showed that this 'Biblical Parallelism' derived from the Hebrew tradition of oral poetry where composers were required to formulate their verses in word-




pairs that were established by tradition (Newman and Popper 1918, pp. 2-5). But it is not a lone example: similar parallelism occurs in the Middle East and the Far East, in South-East Asia and Meso-America, among a great many cultures. It will be noticed that these are binary pairs, rather than oppositions, in parallel, rather than at extremes. But both forms are representative of the motivation towards symmetry and balance.

If I am to discuss the binary principle as it may exist in the blues I will have to leave my general observations there. Basically, though, binary analysis is an aspect of structural analysis which means that the presence of binary formulations can have deeper, structural implica- tions in content, form, expression and meaning.

In my earlier paper (Oliver 1982) I showed that the characteristic blues of vocal/accompaniment uses a sung phrase/instrumental response form of expression. There exists a combination of rhythm/ melody throughout a recording which is composed of stanzas where each line is divided between vocal and instrumental. The vocal part of this is usually of two bars, the sung line broken by a slight caesura and the contour either rising/falling, or high/low. This suggests that an eight-bar or sixteen-bar form that accommodated the vocal/instrumental binary pairing would be as suitable as the twelve-bar sequence. An archaic example, 'Cottonfield Blues' by Garfield Akers, is comprised of couplets (normally associated with eight-bar blues) and, in Titon and Kagan's transcription, a loose, approximately twenty-bar sequence. It is, Titon notes, 'characteristic of field hollers' and hence may be considered close to the pre-blues, generative form of unaccom- panied work song.

Actual key D

J 134 (initial), 136 (final)

1111 _r--

_ I i i -i--,

I'm gon'_ write me a let-ter oo oo

IF 1

V_

V V

I'm gon' mail it in the air

I'm gon' write me a let -ter oo

I'm gon' mail't in the air



184 Paul Oliver

I got something to tell you-oo mama keep it all to yourself Don't you tell your mama-ah don't you tell nobody else

Akers maintains interest by his extended lines, hollers and rhythmic impetus. In such a free form it would be possible to extemporise new lines as one thought of them, or to repeat old ones as they came to mind. But the blues form proper is more disciplined than this and seems to demand a means of conveying dramatic interest. Blues that are merely the repetition of the line three times seem to lack punch - such as an alternate take of Tommy Johnson's 'Lonesome Blues', which has the following stanza:

Cryin' good to you sure lord killin' me Well it's good to you mama sure lord killin' poor me Hey good to you mama says it sure lord killin' me

Like the Edward Lear limericks which disappoint because the last line is the same as the first (rather than, as is now customary, carrying a 'punch' line), three-line repetitions leave the listener feeling flat. Though melodically there is no difference between a three-line stanza which comprises one line repeated twice and a three-line stanza with one line repeated and a rhyming third line, it is evident that the latter form is far more effective in giving weight to the content.

Melodically the blues derives from the Anglo-Scots tradition, tem- pered by an approach to the third tone of each of two tetrachords in the 'blues scale'. Some writers have argued that the variable pitch of the third or seventh degrees of a major scale is African in origin. This may be so, but, whatever its source, there is little argument about its effect: the 'blue notes', or 'bent' and 'turned' notes as blues singers sometimes call them, are essential to blues musicianship. They impart a plaintive, sometimes tense, quality to the playing which is expressive of the mood of the vocal, and made more effective by their relationship to the 'true' intervals of the major scale. While the two tetrachords relate to each other as a binary parallel, the placing of 'blue' notes against 'true' notes forms a continual binary opposition in blues performance.

The binary characteristics of form and sound are sustained in content and meaning. Take, for example, 'James Alley Blues' by Richard 'Rabbit' Brown, a boatman from New Orleans recorded there in 1927.

Oh times ain't now nothing like they used to be No times ain't now nothing like they used to be And I'm telling you all the truth oh take it for me




I done seen better days but I'm puttin' up with these I done seen better days but I'm puttin' up with these I would have a much better time but these girls now are so hard to

please

'Cause I was born in the country she thinks I'm easy to rule 'Cause I was born in the country she thinks I'm easy to rule She try to hitch me to her wagon she want to drive me like a mule

Actual key C

= 144 (initial), 144 (final) A 3

You know I bought the groc -'ries and I paid the rent

Yeah I buys the groc - 'ries

Ar- 3 -

and I pays the rent She tried to make me Ato- 3 - 1 3--

wash her- clothes- but I got good com - mon- sense

I said if you don't want me why don't you tell me so You knowed if you don't want me why don't you tell me so Because it ain't like a man that ain't got nowhere go

I been giving you sugar for sugar let you get salt for salt I'll give you sugar for sugar let you get salt for salt And if you can't get along with me well it's your own fault

Sometime I think that you too sweet to die Sometime I think that you too sweet to die And another time I think you ought to be buried alive

Stanza one: 'Times now/times used to be' are set against 'tell the truth/take it', with a binary distinction made in the rhyming third line. This is characteristic of most of Brown's verses in this blues. Thus 'seen better days/puttin' up with these' (past/present) against 'would have better time/now hard to please'. Simplified further, the distinctions become clearer: 'born in country/thinks easy to rule' - 'try hitch to wagon/drive like mule'. Or in stanza four: 'bought groceries, paid rent' (was gullible) against 'tried to make me wash/but got common sense' (not



186 Paul Oliver

gullible). There is apparently some irony in the lines, reflecting on the singer himself, but it is noteworthy that whereas the first line and its repeat are addressed to the listener (stanzas 1,2,3,4) or to the woman (stanzas 5,6,7), the third line is always a statement about the singer himself. This shift of address which occurs about half-way through the blues also has a dualistic character. The whole blues is revealed as being a subtle composition, which gains its strength from binary oppositions.

Rabbit Brown's blues employs binary oppositions to a marked de- gree and in several ways, but it must be acknowledged that this is not generally the case. An opposition between the repeat line and the third, 'punch' line is not uncommon, but the relationship between the halves of each line, and often that between the repeat and third lines, are more usually characterised by binary parallelism. Consider 'Barbe- cue Blues', by the Georgia singer Robert Hicks, known as Barbecue Bob. This was recorded in Atlanta a few days after Brown's blues, but by a different company.

Woke up this morning gal 'twixt midnight and day I woke up this morning 'twixt midnight and day With my head around my pillow where my brownie used to lay

Actual key C

= 184 (initial), 194 (final)

I know I ain't good look - ing

A- 33 3 3

teeth don't shine like pearls

A-3- 3L

I ain't good look - ing teeth

A _

L

_r 3--

don't shine like pearls So A 3r 3 3-3oo d 3ta 3 thog3 t

glad - good -looks don't take you through this world

Go starch my jumper mama iron my overalls Go starch my jumper iron my overalls My brown done quit me God knows she had it all




I'm gon' tell you now gal like gypsies told the Jews Gon' tell you now gal like gypsies told the Jews If you don't want me it's a cinch I don't want you

Did you ever dream lucky wake up cold in hand Did you ever dream lucky wake up cold in hand That's a mighty true sign your brown's got some other man

My mama told me papa told me too My mama told me papa told me too Some brownskin woman gon' be the death of you

On this record Barbecue Bob's playing and singing display many aspects of the binary principle: vocal/guitar performance; vocal line/ instrumental response in each group of four bars; sung phrases divided by a caesura in each line; exhilarating rhythm against a distinctive melody; the a-a/b structure of the blues form in the stanzas, and the content of the verses themselves, which makes effective use of binary parallelism. 'Ain't good looking/teeth don't shine' represents parallelism not opposition, as does the relationship of this line with the rhyming 'so glad good looks don't take you through this world'. Or again, 'starch jumper/iron overalls' is parallelism, but the 'brown quit me, had it all' line gives the reason for the former injunction. The next verse also contains examples of parallelism: 'tell you/gypsies told Jews' coupled with 'don't want me/don't want you'; and the final stanza is similar. Only the penultimate verse contains an opposition: 'dream lucky/wake cold in hand' (dream/reality), but this is paralleled by the 'mighty true sign' which indicates that the 'dream/wake' sequence is in fact a single phenomenon. Seasoned blues listeners will recognise some of the lines, or fragments of lines, from other blues. Titon discusses the formulaic structure of the blues songs he quotes at some length and it is not necessary to repeat the points here. Sufficient to comment that the formulae used by blues singers as interchangeable elements, or ones on which they can build new verses, are frequently half a line in length.

No verbal description nor musical transcription can convey the aural quality of Barbecue Bob's recording: the 'blue notes' created by his bottleneck slide and sideways pressure on the strings; his vocal 'bothering' of the notes through blues intonation. Nor can the distinc- tiveness of Blind Lemon Jefferson's or Rabbit Brown's performance be appreciated except from their records. Though all three are blues singers, singing blues, they emerge as being sharply differentiated in the idiom: individuals within the group. Their appeal, I suggest, lies



188 Paul Oliver

largely in their capacity to make creative use of the diverse binary aspects of the blues.

If the binary principle is indeed fundamental to the blues, further questions arise: what are its origins? What did the binary nature of blues mean to its exponents and to the society in which they per- formed? Given that the recording of blues dates back only to the 1920S, that the origins of blues have never been satisfactorily identified or dated, and that early collectors of black folk song at a time when, we assume, the blues was in its infancy, gave scant attention to the form, there is little likelihood that we can trace precisely the origins of binary elements in the blues. Nevertheless, some inferences may be made, based on evidence of earlier musical forms that have survived into the recording era.

Of the many forms of black music extant in this century, the work songs appear to have had the longest history. In Savannah Syncopators I discussed at some length the form of the work songs and their possible origins (Oliver 1970, pp. 55-63). To summarise, the collective work songs of the plantation slaves followed a pattern derived from musical forms of the West African savannah regions. This was almost invariably of a leader-and-chorus structure, with a lead singer calling a phrase and the work group singing a response. Such antiphonal, though sometimes slightly overlapping, exchanges between leader and work gang were noted by such early observers of plantation life as Fanny Kemble (Kemble 1839, pp. 162-3), and were recorded as late as the 1950s on penitentiary farms where near-slavery conditions and systems of cultivation persisted (see, for example, Anon. 1947). The call-and-response form passed directly into black religious song, and was (and is) to be heard in spirituals and gospel songs in churches throughout the United States. With the preacher as leader (or an elder performing the same role), and with the congregation as chorus, the antiphonal structure of black collective song survives intact.

Blues is not a collective song type, but, with only the rarest of exceptions, a solo one. That it is related to solo work song, particularly of the kinds which developed after the Civil War and the breaking up of the plantations, seems fairly certain. At any rate, solo work songs were also recorded in the 1930s and later for the Library of Congress (see, for example, Stearns 1941-2), and these show marked structural similarities to the blues. However, the solo labourer had no respond- ing voice to his own vocal lead; instead, extended, meandering calls or hollers 'answered' the sung phrase, both being improvised by the field hand. In the blues, a leisure music rather than one to accompany work, musical instruments are employed to answer the vocal, as we have seen. In some respects, therefore, the relationship between blues vocal



Call-and-response work song survived until recently among (above) the track-lining section crews of the Frisco railroad (photo: Frederic Ramsey Jr, Demopolis, Alabama c. 1956) and (below) the convict labour gangs of the Texas Department of Correction (photo: Bruce Jackson, Ellis prison unit, 1966)



190 Paul Oliver

and instrumental response is a return to, or a consolidation of, a traditional song type which has its roots in Africa.

If the binary principle in the blues has this traceable African connec- tion, the question arises as to whether other binary elements exist in African music that may account for the blues singer's dualistic organisation of his songs, or for that matter, the church singer's use of similar devices in gospel song. The subject of African music is complex, and its connections with Afro-American music are still inad- equately researched. However, it can be noted that there are many qualities in African music generally that are of a markedly dualistic character. Among these is the relationship between music and body movement, especially, but not by any means exclusively, in dance. Another, in general terms, is the widespread distribution of songs with a social function which are used, for example, both to regulate the timing of work and to serve religious purposes.

More specific is the importance of tone in speech and music among peoples whose languages are phonemic, using tone to distinguish meanings in words in a precise way. Many languages are two-tone, permitting imitation on the drums or other musical instruments; Twi, the language of the Asante, is one of these. Not only is this two-tone form of speech dualistic in its essential nature; it is also dualistic in its role within music. The adowa drum orchestra of the Asante uses a range of drums and gongs which play the rhythms of the dance, but the ntumpan pair of tuned drums 'talk' throughout the performance (Oliver 1970, pp. 28-31). To the untrained and uninitiated ear they are just two more drums contributing to the rhythmic complexity of the music but to the Asante ear the orchestra is 'talking' praise phrases as well as providing the rhythmic setting for social dancing. The rhythmic impulse of the African orchestra is also dualistic in quality, for as Father A. M. Jones, the eminent ethnomusicologist, pointed out, 'in African music there is practically always a clash of rhythms: this is a cardinal principle. Even a song which appears to be mono-rhythmic will on investigation turn out to be constructed of two independent but strictly related rhythmic patterns, one inherent in the melody and one belonging to the accompaniment' (Jones 1954, P. 27). As the term implies, the 'cross-rhythms' of African music are set against each other, while the hand-claps that accent the off-beat, common to Afri- can and to Afro-American musics, give an emphasis to the 'weak' beat, which creates an equivalent sense of tension.

These are characteristics that are shared by African musical forms generally, even though the great drum orchestras are less evident in the savannah region, which has in other respects the closest links with North America. This region is typified by the use of stringed instru-




ments of which the most remarkable are the related seron and kore. 'Griots', tribal singers of the Senegambia and Guinea, play these massive lute-harps on which thumb-picked bass rhythms are frequently placed against short, virtuoso melodic runs. Many other instances could be cited to illustrate the dualistic structure of much African music, or dualistic principles in its performance. However, the range of musical forms is too vast for this to be examined in any detail, or for the considerable variety of polyrhythmic forms to be discussed. Unquestionably, binary principles are to be found extensively in Afri- can music, the use of responsorial singing being the most marked, and for the present the matter must rest there.

What bearing has this on African social structures? Is there any relationship between binarism in the music and binarism in social behaviour, myth or symbolism which suggests that the one is expressive of the other? Again, the subject is vast, for there are literally thousands of peoples on the African continent with often widely differing social structures and belief systems. Moieties, the system whereby a society is bisected with the two parts playing com- plementary roles, are hardly known in Africa. 'Dual organisation', as it was termed by Rivers early in the century (Rivers 1924), is widespread among Amerindian peoples, in Indonesia and other parts of the world. Its presence in Africa on a similar scale would greatly assist my argument, but if no such neat correspondence exists, there is much that is dualistic in African societies. Thus, in the homesteads of the Murle, a Nilo-Hamitic people of the Sudan, a notional division links entrances to the homestead on opposite points of the ring of dwellings, a 'typical example of their dualistic way of regarding the whole as being composed of two pairs in balanced opposition. Their word for this is venon, the term aveno being used to express objects of thought in opposition or contrast', as B. A. Lewis has written (Lewis 1972, pp. 41-2). His account gives many instances of balanced oppositions, of the roles of East and West 'drumships' and the Red Chief or Black Commoner clans.

The Dogon of Mali have creation myths which trace the origin of the earth to the double placenta from which emerged the twin beings, Yurugu and Nommo. 'These twin beings, living images of the fundamental principle of twin-ness in creation, were each equipped with two spiritual principles of opposite sex; each of them, therefore, was in himself a pair', a concept which was to 'dominate the organization of society and of the family'. The condition of the twins in the same egg, which for the Dogon corresponds to the ideal, is reflected in 'a religious and economic relationship maintained between the Dogon and the Bozo which has existed, it is said, from the earliest times'. The Dogon



192 Paul Oliver

and the Bozo have a 'cathartic alliance' reflected in the role of the former as cultivators and the latter as fishermen, and in the symbolic sharing of certain millet and fish that represent their twinned duality (Griaule and Dieterlen 1954, pp. 85-6, 107-8).

Binary principles and whole systems may be identified in numerous African societies, whose beliefs echo the Igbirra saying that 'God made all things double.' Further particularisation is not necessary. How closely the musical forms of such societies reflect these principles in their structure remains, however, something of an open question. More problematic still is their prevalence among peoples that were enslaved, for, apart from substantial gaps in anthropological research in Africa, the question of the origins of the slaves as to tribe or locale is by no means resolved. Still, we are talking of tendencies, of disposition towards binary classifications and social systems, rather than the per- petuation in North America of the specific traits of one people or its music in those of the slaves or their descendants. The sale of slaves to plantation owners without consideration for their personal or tribal ties - in fact, the deliberate dissolution of such associations - was part of the policy pursued by slaveholders to break the will of the blacks.

It is tempting to leave it there: to accept that binary principles existed in African music and African societies, and to acknowledge the likelihood that these persisted in the folk memory. Just as certain general- ised folkways, speech patterns, tales, stories and song characteristics

persisted in North America and shaped black culture during and after

slavery, so these dualistic elements persisted and found their ultimate

expression in the blues. Blues, however, is not an African music and while there are iden-

tifiable African retentions in blues, the music is essentially a black American one. Unless a dualistic perception of the world had meaning in North America, it is unlikely that it would have survived. If the

relationship of the binary principle in the blues to black folk culture in the present century is to be uncovered, it must emerge from the

uniqueness of the black American experience. This begins, obviously but fundamentally, with the reality of

slavery. Slave and master - the distinction is at the root of all dichotomies in the black's perception of the world he inhabited. It was the basis for further divisions between the field hand and the overseer, and, divisively within the black slave community, between the 'house niggers' and the 'field niggers'. The latter distinction sowed seeds that were to have many results in later decades, among them the blues, the music of the descendents of the field hands. But the distinction between master and slave also generated its own persistent folklore,




including the stories of 'O1 Massa' and 'John' which were a perennial source of black humour in the 'Quarters' (Dorson 1967, pp. 124-70). No less significant a dichotomy was that based on skin hue; slaves could not deny or escape their colour, nor could they ever be white. The offspring of enforced couplings and their own light-skinned chil- dren were able, sometimes, to 'pass for white', but the step "cross the separation line', in the old spiritual phrase, was an illicit one: 'passing' was the irrevocable transition from black to white. Possibly it was rare, but the son of the slave who dared to pass must have been haunted by the awareness of what he had done in disobeying the rules of the dichotomy. In the rural South, birthplace of the blues, the rules were everywhere made evident: in 'Colored' and 'White' drinking fountains and entrances, in Jim Crow buses and divided stores and in a multi- tude of prohibitions, exclusions and barriers which were backed by enforced custom, when not by law.

It is hardly necessary to detail the wretched catalogue of segregation; it is enough to emphasise that the blues developed at the time when the Jim Crow laws were devised and made enforceable, and that it achieved its greatest popularity among blacks between the wars, when the practice of segregation seemed unshakable. It is not a coincidence that the blues became less popular at the time when legally enforced segregation came to an end. It did not lose its popularity altogether though, especially in the rural parts of the South where black people were, and still are, segregated physically by 'the tracks'. Throughout the blues era the master and slave relationship persisted in the 'boss- man'/John, or Mister Charlie/Shine stories, which merely parodied what was still, in essence, the reality (ibid. pp. 302-56). The plantation owner of the twenties and thirties controlled the lives of 'his' share- croppers; the landlords held the destinies of the tenant farmers in their reckoning books. Roles were never reversed, any more than colours could be exchanged. Black people knew which side of the binary oppositions of caste and colour they were on: being 'uppity' was dangerous.

There were other dualities within the black community itself: between the 'dicty' and the 'po' niggers', between the 'high-yellers' and the 'sealskin blacks', or between the respective roles of men and women in the family. The southern black family has often been described, though not wholly accurately, as a 'matriarchate'; the mater- nal focus of the family and the mother's provision of a stable base were frequently in opposition to the unstable position of the black male produced by periodic lay-offs from work and the need to leave home in search of alternative employment. This accounts for the position of women singers in the blues, who either had to perform on the



194 Paul Oliver

professional stage as vaudeville entertainers, or had to risk being vilified in the black community through their association with the male singers. Vaudeville blues women had already stepped out of the rural community into the world of show business, thus distancing themselves from parochial southern values. Rural women blues singers adopted a stance traditionally seen as male - aggressive, sexually boastful - as Nellie Florence, recorded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1928, demonstrated in her 'Jacksonville Blues':

Let me be your wiggler until your wobbler come Let me be your wiggler until your wobbler come If she beats me wiggling she got to wobble some

Women cryin' danger but I ain't raisin' my hand Women cryin' danger but I ain't raisin' my hand I got a way of lovin they just can't understand

I can strut my pudding spread my grease with ease I can strut my pudding spread my grease with ease Cause I know my onions that's why I always please

Wild about coffee but I'm crazy 'bout China tea Wild about my coffee but I'm crazy 'bout my China tea But this sugar daddy is sweet enough for me

Actual key C J 140 (initial). 164 (final)

A3- -3 - p --

3 - - - -1--3 - - -p -

3 - 1- - r -

-

Men they call me ov - en they says I am - red hot_

Men they call me ov - en

A-- 3 - 3 r--

3-

they say that I'm red hot They say I -

I t A r---3--I r--3---L . r--3- -y ot sm

--hot

-'ve got some - thin'- the oth-er gals ain't got

One John in the city one lives up on a hill Oh John's in the city one lives up on the hill But the man I'm lovin' lives down in Jacksonville




Women singers were attracted to the churches, where their talents were welcome in the congregations and the gospel choirs. The church provided firm moral guidance and support for the family which under- pinned the role of the women in the community and for those male members who had secure jobs - as well, of course, as the men who, secure or not, had deep religious convictions.

This brings us to one of the most important oppositions in the rural black community - between the church-goers and those who rejected the church: 'Saints' and 'Sinners'. Their respective locations, the country church and the juke-joint, were no less markedly opposed; nor were the behaviour expectations within them: giving to the collection in the church, purchasing drinks in the juke; abstinence in the one, inebriation in the other. Musically there were similarities, as some writers have argued, but there were also significant differences between the gospel music of the church and the blues of the juke-joint, the former being essentially spiritual, the latter unashamedly profane. Gospel song was a collective music; though there were outstanding soloists, their message was of unity, expressed through the gospel choir and the responses of the congregation to the lead of the preacher. The church member might sing 'I Got Two Wings to Veil My Face' or 'I'm a Soldier of the Cross in the Army of the Lord', but he sang it in the company of the army within the church. Blues singers, on the other hand, though sometimes accompanied by another instrumentalist, rarely sang together. There are exceptions of course, but overwhelm- ingly blues are sung solo and their content is self-centred. When the blues singer states 'I'm a stranger here, just blowed in your town' or 'I'm goin' where the chilly winds don't blow', he is speaking first for himself, though his listeners will identify with him as individuals.

As might be expected, the values expressed in gospel song are uplifting and the imagery of 'We are climbing Jacob's ladder', 'I've got Heaven in my view', 'I'm Gonna make Heaven my Home' or 'Good News, Chariot's Coming' is of a 'Pearly White City Above'. The spatial imagery of the blues is diametrically opposite: 'Down to the bottom, where I stay', 'Low Down Mississippi Bottom Man', 'Stomp 'em down to the bricks', 'low-down and dirty'. Whereas gospel songs frequently symbolise spiritual purity by images of washing and cleanliness ('Wade in the Water', 'Goin' to wash in that beautiful stream'), blues singers make frequent use of deliberately unclean images: 'Gettin' Dirty Shakin' that Thing', 'Low Down Dirty Shame Blues', 'Find Me at the Greasy Spoon', 'Greasy Greens', 'Dishrag Blues' and so on. 'Dirty tone', 'gut-bucket', 'in the alley' and 'gettin' down' are all terms of approbation in the blues.

The stability of the church as an institution is underlined in many



196 Paul Oliver

gospel songs: 'On This Rock I Will Build My Church', 'I Got a Home in That Rock', 'On Jordan's Stormy Banks We Stand', or 'Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land'. The pervading sentiment contrasts sharply with the blues singer's pride in his independence and his propensity to ramble: 'I'm a nach'al born rambler, I don't have to work'. 'Ramblin' Mind Blues', 'Ramblin' Man', 'Midnight Rambler's Blues' and scores of others project a picture of a dissolute, promiscuous, anarchic figure. That all blues singers do not fit this self-proclaimed stereotype hardly needs stating; what is significant is the way in which the exponents of the Devil's Music, the blues, challenge those who, in the Lord's Music, proclaim standards of righteous living.

Though scores of other examples might be cited, these dichotomies are probably sufficient to show that marked binary oppositions existed in the black community. Falling 'in the shadow of the plantation' and still clouded by the aftermath of slavery, or suffering the stresses of being at the bottom of the economic and the social scales, blacks experienced two major categories of oppositions: the one based on colour and caste, with whites on one side and blacks on the other; the second based on a schism within black society, with the church and its gospel music on one side, and the secular 'sinners' with their blues on the other. This is an over-simplification, of course, but in relation to the role of the blues in the period between the two World Wars, which is our concern here, it is valid none the less. It should be noted that while a number of blues singers, among them Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Barbecue Bob and Blind Boy Fuller, made recordings of spirituals and gospel songs, they did so under pseudonyms which preserved the distinction between the sacred and profane.*

Though the values of the black church are not those of the white church, nor of 'respectable' white society, they are certainly close. In some of the sects the strictness of behaviour required by the elders and

preachers exceeds that of the fundamentalist white churches, while in a large number of black churches abstinence from liquor and smoking, segregation of the sexes in worship and other strictures are common. Values expressed in blues are generally opposed to those of both the church and the white community. (In fact, poor whites also dichoto- mised their value systems, opposing the values of middle-class whites, as well as those of blacks; but this is a digression.) It may not be

surprising, therefore, to find that the content of blues tends to give expression to sadness rather than joy, loneliness rather than compan- ionship, poverty rather than wealth, disengagement rather than in-

* Patton as Elder J. J. Hadley; Jefferson as Deacon L. J. Bates; Barbecue Bob under his real name of Robert Hicks; Blind Boy Fuller as Brother George.




volvement, self rather than other, the individual rather than the group. Only one recording in the period is entitled 'Happy Blues', only a couple state 'I'm so glad' (one of them being 'I'm So Glad I'm Twenty- One Years Old Today', cited by Titon), while the numbers of 'Mis- treatin", 'Troubled', 'Lonesome', 'Worried' and 'Low Down' blues run into scores (no less than four of Titon's forty-eight quoted items are 'Lonesome') (Titon 1977, p. xi).

There is a one-sided emphasis in the content of blues and this appears to conflict with the binary character which I have been discus- sing. 'It's just a frame of mind that people are in. But you can't just build it out of thoughts, that's for sure. You have to have some kind of experience for this. And if you don't have a feelin', you can't do much with it', Henry Townsend explained to me (Oliver 1965, p. 170). Buster Pickens agreed: 'No man in good spirit, no man in good heart can sing the blues, neither play them ... That's when you start to sing the blues - when you've got the blues' (ibid., p. 170). Describing how he composed 'Looking Up at Down', Big Bill Broonzy related that he was 'just scratching and fighting and poor Bill was trying to live' (Bruynoghe and Broonzy 1955, p. 55).

Nevertheless, melancholy is not the only emotion that the singer of blues experiences. He enjoys the blues, apparently getting pleasure even from the saddest examples. So too do his hearers when he plays to an audience. What, then, do they gain from the blues? 'Son', said the aged Reese D'Pree from Georgia, 'the blues regenerates a man' (Campbell 1939, p. 63). 'A forsaken man would take hisself back to his room and he have got what you may call the blues, and he's just try to sing to make hisself confident', J. D. Short observed (Charters 1963, p. 43). Or, as Robert Curtis Smith, a tractor driver in Clarksdale, Mississippi, told me a score of years ago, 'I love the blues because the blues is the only thing that gives me relief when I gets to the place where it seems like everything go wrong' (Oliver 1965, p. 23).

Many statements by blues singers confirm these explanations: the blues gives relief, restores self-esteem, lifts the depression of the blues from the heart of the singer. 'The song will come to you when you are really depressed . . . it gives you relief - it kinda helps somehow. I don't know - it kinda helps' (Henry Townsend, in ibid., p. 24). Blues, or the playing and singing of blues, and listening to and participating in blues, lifted the singer out of his depression, anxiety, loneliness, awareness of his 'mistreated' state, and enabled him to cope with the condition. His hearers shared the emotional release and the restoration of spirit that the blues afforded.

In one sense it could be argued that the blues accommodated the conditions of repression and alienation which gave rise to the blues as



198 Paul Oliver

feeling; that it canalised and drained off the frustration and anger which might have taken a more militant turn, thereby bringing those conditions to an earlier end. But it seems to me that the blues was a necessary step towards such militancy; that before militancy could develop, a sense of identity and a confirmation of individuality were essential for each member of the black community. Blues helped this process, I would contend, through the pervasiveness of its binary form, structure and qualities. For the binary character was not one of conflict, of opposites that could not be reconciled. On the contrary, rhythm and melody, call and response, repeat line and rhymed line, vocal and instrumental, rise and fall in vocal line, parallelism in statement of content were all brought together. Blues as song is the combination of numerous pairings, creatively reconstructed and reshaped in each song or performance. It is this resolution of oppositions and tensions, this coordinating of apparently contrary elements which gives it the peculiar force that has made it so important in black secular life.

For the blues singer, or, more accurately, for those who sang blues, the idiom provided a matrix in which could be worked out, in in- numerable ways, the conflicts and problems that assailed them. The resolution which the blues provided also produced the relief, and it was this that 'kinda helped', that 'regenerated', that made 'hisself confident'. Gospel song on the other hand, tended to emphasise the group, through the congregation and the choir, through the unity of the church and, as has been shown briefly, in the message of its themes. Both were important for the black consolidation which led to the powerful thrust of the 1960s. Interestingly, a convergence phenomenon can be identified in the preceding period: a tendency towards blues bands was marked in the post-war years, with greater emphasis on the blues group, while the increasing singularity of individual gospel singers, such as Mahalia Jackson, Roberta Martin or Marie Knight, is also a post-war tendency.

With the new confidence in the self that the blues realised, and with the strength in collective action which the black churches revealed and which was specifically consolidated in the Civil Rights movement, the individual and group pride necessary for the 1960s campaigns was achieved. It is therefore no accident that the music of the new genera- tion, soul, drew equally from blues and gospel; it was a highly significant pairing drawing from a binary distinction that lay deep in black culture.




References Books and articles

Bruynoghe, Y. and Broonzy, W. 1955. Big Bill's Blues (London) Campbell, E. S. 1939. 'Blues are the negroes' lament', in Esquire's Jazz Book, ed.

P. E. Miller and R. Venables (London, 1947), PP. 54-63 Charters, S. 1963. The Poetry of the Blues (New York) Dorson, R. M. 1967. American Negro Folk Tales (Greenwich, Conn.) Faron, L. C. 1962. 'Symbolic values and the integration of society among the

Mapuche of Chile', The American Anthropologist, 64, pp. 1151-64 Fox, J. J. 1975. 'On binary categories and primary symbols', in The Interpretation

of Symbols, ed. R. Willis (Chichester), pp. 91-132 Griaule, M. and Dieterlen, G. 1954. 'The Dogon', in African Worlds, ed. D.

Forde (London) Jones, A. M. 1954. 'African rhythm', Africa, 24:1, pp. 26-47 Kemble, F. A. 1839. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-39, ed.

J. A. Scott (London, 1961) Leach, E. 1962. 'Genesis as myth', in Myth and Cosmos, ed. J. Middle-

ton (New York, 1967), pp. 1-13 Levi-Strauss, C. 1963. 'Do dual organisations exist?' in Structural Anthropology

(New York), pp. 132-63 1969. The Raw and the Cooked (translation of Le Cru et le Cuit) (New York)

Lewis, B. A. 1972. The Murle: Red Chiefs and Black Commoners (Oxford) Newman, L. I. and Popper, W. 1918. Studies in Biblical Parallelism (California) Oliver, P. 1965. Conversation with the Blues (London)

1970. Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues (London) 1982. 'Blues and the binary principle', in Popular Music Perspectives, ed.

P. Tagg and D. Horn (Gothenburg and Exeter) Radin, P. 1923. The Winnebago Tribe, 37th Annual Report of the Bureau of

American Ethnology (Washington, DC), pp. 139-54 Rivers, W. H. R. 1924. Social Organization (London) Titon, J. T. 1977. Early Downhome Blues (Urbana, Ill.)

Recordings Akers, Garfield (vocal and guitar) and Calicott, Joe (guitar) 23 September 1929.

'Cottonfield Blues Part 2', Vocalion 1442 (Memphis). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 20

Anon. 1947. 'Murderer's Home', Recorded Alan Lomax (Parchman, Miss.), Nixa NJL 11

Bob, Barbecue (Robert Hicks) (vocal and guitar) 25 March 1927. 'Barbecue Blues', Columbia 14205-D (Atlanta). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 26

Brown, Richard 'Rabbit' (vocal and guitar) 11 March 1927. 'James Alley Blues', Victor 20578 (New Orleans). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 47

Collins, Sam (vocal and guitar) April 1927. 'The Jail House Blues', Gennett 6167 (Richmond, Indiana). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 19

Florence, Nellie (vocal) and Lincoln, Charley (guitar) 21 April 1928. 'Jackson- ville Blues', Columbia 14342-D (Atlanta). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 5



200 Paul Oliver

Jefferson, Blind Lemon (vocal and guitar) c. March 1928. 'Got the Blues', Paramount 12354 (Chicago). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 31

Johnson, Tommy (vocal and guitar) 31 August 1928. 'Lonesome Blues' -2, unissued Victor, master 45463-2; issued on Historical HLP-31 (Memphis). Quoted Titon 1977, no. 13

Stearns, Marshall W. (ed.) 1941-2. Negro Blues and Hollers, Library of Congress AFS L59 (Washington, DC)

Permission to quote transcriptions originally appearing in Jeff Todd Titon, Early Downhome Blues, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1977, has been granted by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, ? 1977.



'Twixt Midnight and Day- Binarism, Blues and Black Culture

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