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From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters' Downhome Blues and The McNair Scholars Journal Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 8 2005 From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African- American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago Jennifer Goven Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair Recommended Citation Goven, Jennifer (2005) "From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African-American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago," McNair Scholars Journal: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/mcnair/vol9/iss1/8 Copyright © 2005 by the authors. McNair Scholars Journal is reproduced electronically by ScholarWorks@GVSU. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ mcnair?utm_source=scholarworks.gvsu.edu%2Fmcnair%2Fvol9%2Fiss1%2F8&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African-American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago ABSTRACT It is not surprising that in 1903 the African Americans developed the blues as a infamous “father of the blues,” W.C. reaction to the harsh living conditions in the Handy, a traveling musician, first heard Mississippi Delta. The music found a new the “primitive music” known today as home during the first half of the twentieth the Blues while waiting for a train in century when thousands of African Tutwiler, Mississippi. Robert Palmer, Americans migrated to Chicago. The author of Deep Blues, notes that the first purpose of this research is to understand words Handy heard the ragged man sing how migration and the urban environment were, “Goin’ where the Southern cross shaped the Black experience. Blues music, the Dog,” a reference to the intersection specifically the music of Muddy Waters, will of two trains.1 In fact, Lawrence Levine, be the focus of this study. His Downhome in Black Culture and Black Consciousness, Blues, which grew in popularity following describes the blues as “an ode to WW II, both shaped and reflected the movement and mobility.”2 Having been emergence of an Urban African-American bound to the land for centuries, African identity in Chicago. Americans viewed the ability to move as the greatest manifestation of their American right to self-determination.3 By the 1870s thousands of African- Jennifer Goven American migrant workers and McNair Scholar wanderers—mostly male—traversed the South.4 The unknown bluesman that Handy described most likely moved from plantation to plantation across the Delta—guitar in tow—looking for work. This assertion of mobility broadened the American landscape and expanded the African-American experience; thus, “[setting] the stage for the evolution of the country blues.”5 This paper examines the role of Blues Music as part of the African-American experience and consciousness and argues that the blues played a vital role in the development of a Black urban identity. Until the First World War, African Americans rarely traveled north of the Mason-Dixon line, but the growing number of vacant industrial positions in the North coupled with the intolerable cruelty of the South inspired thousands of African Americans to head to the Promised Land. Historians often gravitate towards this first wave of migration, referred to now as the Great Anthony Travis, Ph.D. Migration; however, following World Faculty Mentor 1 Robert Palmer, Deep Blues. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 45. 2 Lawrence Levine, Black Culture, Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 262. 3 Ibid., 262. 4 LeRoi Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America. (New York: Perennial, 2002), 61. 5 Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), GVSU McNair Scholars Journal VOLUME 9, 2005 63 War II, 200,000 African Americans, a portrait of the Negro in America at Mississippi—not far from Tutwiler—to the majority Mississippians, migrated that particular time.”8 Some historians research and record the unique to Chicago.6 Much can be understood question the validity of the blues that African-American folk music. Located about the relationship between migrated to the urban North. However, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta migration and identity formation by blues music remained a reflection of the and populated by a large majority of examining the function of the blues, folk experience, despite its migration, African-American cotton sharecroppers, specifically Muddy Waters’ recordings, because as Levine explains: Coahoma County, with its long tradition during this tumultuous period of of African-American music, proved transition in African-American history. The personalized, solo elements of the a near perfect destination for John As a bluesman, Waters convened the blues may indicate a decisive move Work, a member of the Fisk University community, conjured up safe spaces into the twentieth-century American Music Department, and Alan Lomax, a amidst the unusual urban landscape, consciousness, but the musical style folklorist for the Library of Congress. and assisted those who came with him of the blues indicates a holding on to That summer, they had hoped to record from the Delta in renegotiating their the old roots at the very time when the legendary, but illusive, bluesman past, their home, and their identity. the dispersion of Negroes throughout Robert Johnson, but another popular His lyrics vividly addressed the issues the country and the rise of the radio delta bluesman Son House informed that confronted both the pre-migrant and the phonograph could have them of Johnson’s untimely death and and post-migrant psyche. Thus, by spelled the demise of a distinctive sent them in search of a young bluesman examining Waters’ lyrics, it is possible Afro-American musical style. While called Muddy Waters instead. to understand the abstract processes it is undoubtedly true that work When Lomax and Work arrived at of reshaping the collective identity songs and field hollers were close to the Stovall Plantation, Muddy Waters, of a generation of African-American the West African musical archetype, born McKinley Morganfield, was migrants. so much of which had survived the working as a tractor driver. On the The blues, according to Houston centuries of slavery, blues with its weekends, Waters, then twenty-six, A. Baker, author of Blues, Ideology, and emphasis upon improvisation, its turned his modest cabin into a juke Afro-American Literature, “constitute retention to call and response pattern, joint to supplement his meager income an amalgam that seems always to have its polyrhythmic effects, and its and make a name for himself as a been in motion in America—always methods of vocal production which bluesman. African Americans living in becoming, shaping, transforming, included slides, slurs, vocal leaps, the Delta often gathered at juke joints displacing the peculiar experiences of and the use of falsetto, was a definite or county picnics; whether in the deep Africans in the New World.”7 Baker’s assertion of central elements of the woods or a cramped one-room shack, unique definition implies then, that traditional communal musical style.9 they found they could let loose in the the blues music that enveloped the absence of their oppressor’s gaze. Waters’ Delta for the first half of the twentieth The fact that the blues remained wholly moonshine warmed the aching bones century reflected the African-American traditional, yet forward looking at the of men and women who spent their rural experience while the blues that same time is reflective of the collective days in sun-drenched cotton fields, enlivened Chicago’s South side following African-American identity which Farah and his blues soothed the soul that the migration reflected the African- Jasmine, author of Who Set You Flowin’?, undoubtedly ached for something more. American urban experience. Jones describes as “at once modern and The presence of the bluesman was vital supports this idea, claiming, “the most premodern.”10 to these gatherings; it was he who, expressive Negro music of any given In 1941, thirty-eight years after W. C. from behind his guitar, orchestrated period will be an exact reflection of Handy first heard the blues, two folksong the eating, drinking, and dancing that what the Negro himself is. It will be collectors traveled to Coahoma County, eased the tension caused by the ruthless 6 Mike Rowe. Blues Chicago: The City and the Music. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), 174. 7 Houston A. Baker Jr. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) 8 Jones, 137. 9 Levine, 223-224. 10 Farah Jasmine Griffin. Who Set You Flowin’? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 82. 64 From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African-American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago humiliation and backbreaking work that I feel mistreated, girl, you know For African Americans who spent characterized Delta life. now, I don’t mind dyin.14 most of their lives in the Delta, the In the Delta, the overwhelming desire urban landscape was unnatural. Many of to be free from oppression connected By invoking the train, “long a symbol of the new migrants traded the strenuous the pre-migrant psyche to the bluesman freedom in the African-American oral sharecropping system that sustained who commonly invoked mobility as an tradition,” Waters provided an answer them in the Delta for the most grueling assertion of freedom and an escape from for those looking to escape the harsh industrial jobs Chicago had to offer. mistreatment. Levine suggests that just Mississippi Delta.15 The train, with its The stench of the slaughterhouses or the possibility of movement “operated magnificent strength and rhythmic the choking fumes of the foundries as a safety valve for millions of Negroes splendor represented freedom from filled their noses and replaced the who without the alternative of migration the Jim’ Crow South.
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