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McNair Scholars Journal

Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 8

2005 From the Delta to : ’ Downhome and the Shaping of African- American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago Jennifer Goven Grand Valley State University

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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 developed 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. , 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— 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 .”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. (: , 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 . 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 , a amidst the unusual urban landscape, consciousness, but the musical style folklorist for the . 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 , but another popular His lyrics vividly addressed the issues the country and the rise of the radio delta bluesman 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 without the alternative of migration the Jim’ Crow South. Although African scent of freshly plowed dirt or warm would have felt trapped and hopeless.”11 Americans left the station in segregated spring rain. Hard pavement rather than This is exemplified in the first verse from passenger cars, engulfed in the stench dirt roads greeted their feet, massive “I Be’s Troubled,” recorded on the Stovall of inequality, perhaps as the train rolled steel structures instead of tall trees Plantation in 1941 when Waters sings: further north, they felt the strangling emblazoned the horizon, and bright grasp of Jim Crow weaken as Viethel lights rather than brilliant stars lit the Well, if I feel tomorrow Wills, in the documentary Goin’ to way for the new urbanites. Amidst Like I feel today, Chicago suggests: this strange industrial environment, I’m gonna pack my suitcase a familiar character emerged carrying And make my getaway. I came to Chicago on the train, with him the sound of the Delta. The I be troubled, I’m all worried in mind, what I remember most about it bluesman, the “wandering stranger” of And I never be satisfied, was the conductor when we got to the South, the embodiment of mobility, And I just can’t keep from cryin.12 Cable, said, okay, you can became the personification of home in through down that yassir’ and no the big city.17 In the verses that follow, Waters goes on sir’ and say yes and no now.16 Historians often use the terms urban to describe the mistreatment he endured and country as well as downhome to at the hands of a no-good woman. In Waters used the image of the train to describe the blues that Waters made Downhome Blues Lyrics, Jeff Todd Titon call upon the desire for freedom shared popular in Chicago during the 40s and suggests that blues singers often assumed by the Delta community. By doing so 50s. While the terms urban and country the role of the victim so they could “express he tweaked the collective consciousness fit logically, the term downhome fits their desire for freedom more concretely.”13 of African Americans whose identity psychologically. More than just the fact In “I Be’s Troubled” Waters told the had been shaped by years of Southern that they originated in the country or common tale of a fickle woman in order oppression and prepared them for the that they were popularized in an urban to stress his overall dissatisfaction with the transition from rural sharecroppers, environment, it is the power of the blues continuous cloud of oppression that hung bound to the land, to migrants, ready to to evoke the South for the throngs of over the Delta. In his 1941 version of the conquer the North. On a rainy day in African Americans attempting to adjust Delta standard “Country Blues,” recorded 1943, two years after he heard his voice to city life that is most significant. When on the Stovall Plantation, he resolves to played back to him for the first time by examining the blues as a function of “ride the blinds”—hitch a train—rather the two song-collectors, Waters joined identity formation, it makes sense to than endure more misery; he sings: the exodus. As the Delta faded in the utilize the term downhome because as distance, so too did his rural identity Titon explains: Well, I’m leaving this morning, leaving the necessary space for a more if I have to ride the blinds urban identity to develop.

11 Levine, 265. 12 Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began. (New York: The New Press, 2002), 417. 13 Jeff Todd Titon, ed., Downhome Blues Lyrics: An Anthology from the Post-World War II Era, 2nd ed. (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 10. 14 Lomax, 417. 15 Griffin, 19. 16 George King, Prod. Goin’ to Chicago. (Mississippi: University of Mississippi, 1994) Viewed November 27, 2004. 17 Griffin, 55.

GVSU McNair Scholars Journal VOLUME 9, 2005 65 The term downhome is evocative, the values and memories that functioned to soften the hard edges of calling up not so much an actual, sustained black people. The South the city and provide the new migrants physical place (the rural South), emerges as a home of the ancestor, a transitional space to renegotiate but the spirit of the place, the the place where community their collective identity. However, Southern root, that moved with the and history are valued over the acclimatization and the development music and the culture as African Northern individualism.19 of an African-American middle class Americans carried their downhome led African Americans who rode the way of life into the twentieth- Before African Americans could first wave of migration to view the century cities.18 collectively move towards an urban downhome blues that accompanied identity, they first had to renegotiate the second-generation migrants as old- The supreme function of the blues their collective rural identity. Waters’ fashioned. in Chicago at this time was to guide downhome blues facilitated this re- The downhome blues may have the consciousness of newly arrived examination. Newcomers, comforted by appeared old-fashioned to the older migrants out of the rural South safely the safe space that surrounded the blues generation, but the unfamiliar sense of into the urban North. The bluesman, and the nostalgic memories evoked homesickness drew the new arrivals by invoking the soul that sustained the in Water’ songs, renegotiated their to the bluesman because, as Titon Black community in the South, carved Southern history, molded a collective suggests, the familiarity of the southern a path out of the Delta as powerful and memory, and passed through the first music steadied them.23 The sound of as promising as the tracks of the Illinois phase in the transition from rural to strings moaning under the pressure of a Central Railway. urban identity. bottleneck and the locomotive rhythm of Conveniently traversing the intolerable Newly transplanted bluesman the harp invoked an image of the South Delta, the Illinois Central brought were especially drawn to rent parties, “tinted with nostalgia.”24 A number thousands of African Americans to the described by Waters’ biographer of popular blues tunes during this city’s South Side during the . Robert Gordon as “a get-together in period revolved around returning to the Waters downhome blues grew in someone’s home where the drinks South. Waters, in “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” popularity among the freshest arrivals were cheaper, the food more plentiful, his 1948 version of “I Be’s Troubled,” that gathered at after-hour joints and and the audience nearer , resolves to return to the South, the rent parties. Rich in southern tradition and where musicians could establish oppressive setting that drove him and and lacking the sophistication that the their reputations.”20 There, bluesmen thousands of other African Americans to growing African-American middle class found an audience uninspired by the the North, he sings: was becoming accustomed to, such get- “bluebird beat,” a mixture of earlier togethers appealed to bluesmen as well classic blues and that dominated Well, I’m going away to leave; as the city’s young new audience. Waters’ the music scene.21 Pete Welding, Waters’ won’t be back no more. sound, although amplified in the city, friend and the founder of Testament Going back down South, child; remained distinctly Delta in style. The Records, described what Waters called don’t you want to go? rent parties, reminiscent of southern “sweet jazz” as a “refined, polished, and Woman I’m troubled; country picnics, were significant in that institutionalized” version of the country- I be all worried in mind. they created safe spaces, best defined by based blues that arrived in Chicago Well babe, I just can’t be satisfied, Griffin as: following the first wave of migration. and I just can’t keep from crying.25 Since the 1920s, Welding suggests, sites where the South is invoked— the music “had been progressively Waters’ resolve, although hypothetical, not just in its horror, terror, and emasculated.”22 Perhaps initially the symbolized the new African-American exploitation, but a place that housed popular blues of the 1920s similarly Chicagoans vision of the South as home,

18 Titon, 1. 19 Griffin, 9. 20 Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters. (Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 71. 21 Robert Palmer, Deep Blues. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 135. 22 Gordon, 97. 23 Titon, 10. 24 Griffin, 53. 25 Titon, 148.

66 From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African-American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago and as such, a place worthy of missing. Along with offering nostalgic images well.29 Of these spiritual gatherings, Julio As they did in the South, bluesmen of the South for the newly arrived, Finn, author of The Bluesman, suggests: continued to express the attitudes bluesmen like Waters’ often incorporated of African Americans in the North. symbols of Southern African-American There, on the ground where Perhaps this traditional style, which traditions; one of the most popular their people had combined themes of mistreatment and being . Naturally, in the midst to be reunited with the gods of mobility, comforted the migrants not of dramatic change, African Americans Africa, their spirits were able to only because of its nostalgic pulse but welcomed tradition with open arms. free themselves from the slavers’ because so many African Americans Waters explained to Robert Palmer why bondage and soar, and out of these felt disillusioned by urban life. In he sang about hoodoo so often, saying stolen flights would come the music 1949, when Chicago’s South and near “you know, when you writin’ them songs and words which became the blues, West sides swelled with new arrivals, that are coming from down that way, jazz, creole and .30 Waters’ “Train Fare Home” soothed the you can’t leave out somethin’ about that homesickness that spread like a cold in a mojo thing. Because that is what people Finn quotes W. E. B. Dubois’ description cramped kitchenette. He sings: believed in at that time.”27 A perfect of the Root Doctor, one of the most example of this is Waters’ 1950 hit important figures in the hoodoo Blues and trouble just keep on “,” in which he sings: tradition, also called the Medicine Man worrying me or Hootchie Cootchie man. Dubois Blues and trouble just keep on I’m goin’ down to Louisiana describes him as, worrying me Baby, behind the sun They bother me so bad, I just can’t I’m goin’ down to Louisiana the healer of the sick, the interpreter stay here, no peace Honey, behind the sun of the Unknown, the comforter of If I could get lucky and win my Well, you know I just found out the sorrowing, the supernatural train fare home My trouble’s just begun avenger of wrong, and the one who If I could get lucky and win my I’m goin’ down to rudely but picturesquely expressed train fare home Get me a mojo hand the longing, disappointment, I believe I’ll go back down in I’m goin’ down to New Orleans, and resentment of a stolen and Clarksdale, little girl that’s where umm-hmmm oppressed people.31 I belong.26 Get me a mojo hand I’m gonna show all you good- Ironically, this is nothing other than Again Waters invokes the powerful lookin’ women a concise definition of a bluesman; symbol of the train. In the Delta, the Just how to treat your man28 perhaps the recent migrants viewed sound of a train in the distance reminded Waters as the modern Root Doctor of African Americans that there was In “Louisiana Blues,” Waters again the city; Waters himself seems to. While somewhere besides the heartbreaking begins with a hypothetical journey this may appear to be a metaphorical plantations that stained the American south, this time to New Orleans, whose analogy, Waters did comfort those South. However, Chicago did not prove forbidding and mysterious bayous are transplanted from Delta soil in much to be the Promised Land it had been in home to hoodoo. In much the same way the same way that the Root Doctor the minds of those dreaming to escape that juke joints, and later rent parties, did those transplanted from African the cotton fields. Waters, by claiming provided African Americans with a safe soil. In his 1954 hit “I’m Your Hoochie Clarksdale as his home, ameliorated space that nurtured their identity, the Coochie Man,” Waters illuminates this some of the homesickness felt by the well-insulated swamps of New Orleans connection. He sings: recent migrants. offered African Americans refuge as

26 Gordon, 97. 27 Palmer, 97. 28 Palmer, 98. 29 Julio Finn, The Bluesman: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas. (New York: Interlink Books, 1992), 110. 30 Ibid., 111. 31 Ibid., 5.

GVSU McNair Scholars Journal VOLUME 9, 2005 67 I got a black cat bone American males specifically is the mannish of mobility, and his deep connection I got a mojo too behavior that characterized their identity to African-American tradition. This I got the John the Conqueroo in the city. Bluesman, like Waters, radiated powerful combination both liberated I’m gonna mess with you masculinity and exuded confidence. This and elevated the collective African- I’m gonna make you girls combination excited the male migrants American male identity. Lead me by the hand who had witnessed the perfection with Considering that prior to the Then the world’ll know which the Delta stifled African-American Emancipation most African Americans The Hoochie Coochie man32 masculinity. When Alan Lomax recalled lived and died bound to the land, the meeting Waters on the Stovall Plantation, assertion of their natural American right The hoodoo charms that Waters claims he described the young bluesman as a to mobility undoubtedly expanded to have in this verse, the “black cat “Delta wallflower.” This image sharply their collective consciousness. Angela Y. bone,” the “mojo,” and the “John the contrasts with Lomax’s later depiction of Davis, author of Blues Legacies and Black Conqueroo” are described by Finn as Waters as a “sharply dressed, supervirile Feminism, suggests that the personal the “material manifestations of power.”33 dude, with money in his pocket, [and all] journeys that African Americans began These amulets, composed of “any the women in town on his trail.”35 Waters’ post-emancipation “were occasioned by number of objects: cats’ claws, hair, projected this new overtly masculine psychological repositionings.” Examining teeth, roots, herbs, etc… sealed in a image in lyrics like these taken from his the impetus for, and the progression of, small bag or cloth,” obtained their power 1955 hit “.” such “psychological repositionings”37 is from the Root Doctor.34 By claiming to necessary to understanding the effect of possess such charms, Waters is in fact I’m a man, I spell mmm, migration on African-American identity claiming to have the ability to empower aaa child, nnn formation on Post World War II Chicago. his people. In hoodoo blues songs like That represents man. The popularity of downhome blues “Louisiana Blues” and “Hoochie Coochie No B, O child, Y among the newly relocated Mississippians Man,” both the hoodoo tradition and That mean mannish boy reflects a period of transition for music “come together to function I’m a man, I’m a full grown man Americans in which their rural identity as a source of strength, to set off a I’m a man, I’m a natural born evolved into a more urban identity. reaction and bring about a desired effect. lovers man However, the blues not only reflected They act as magic—perhaps the first I’m a man, I’m a rollin’ stone the new urban identity of African function music ever had.” I’m a man, I’m a hoochie Americans but also was an active Waters’ downhome blues not only coochie man36 ingredient in the alteration itself. It soothed and strengthened the post- soothed the heartache heaped on the migrant psyche; it transformed it as well. In “Mannish Boy,” Waters flaunts his tired shoulders of sharecroppers in the Once steadied by the blues, the urban masculinity, something the oppressive Delta, inspired them to assert their right identity of the new arrivals began taking hierarchy of the Delta never would have to search for a freer place, nurtured their shape. One major distinction between allowed. He expresses his manliness in post-migrant psyche, and strengthened the rural and urban identity of African- terms of his sexual prowess, his freedom their urban identity in Chicago.

32 Eric Sackheim, ed. The Blues Line: Blues Lyrics form Leadbelly to Muddy Waters. (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1969), 432. 33 Ibid., 128. 34 Ibid., 128. 35 Lomax, 419 36 “Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy Lyrics” http://lyrics.rare-lyrics.com/M/Muddy-Waters/Mannish-Boy.html. Viewed: June 23, 2005. 37 Davis, 68.

68 From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African-American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago Bibliography

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George King, Prod. Goin’ to Chicago. Mississippi: University of Mississippi, 1994 Viewed November 27, 2004.

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“Muddy Waters—Mannish Boy Lyrics” http://lyrics.rare-lyrics.com/M/Muddy-Waters/Mannish-Boy.html. Viewed: June 23, 2005.

Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.

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