Reachin' Pete and Johnny Nab: the Police in Commercial Blues Recordings to 1943
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The Lyrics in African American Popular Music Proceedings of Metz (September, 29th-30th 2000) Le texte dans la musique populaire afro-americaine Actes du colloque international de Metz (29-30 septembre 2000) Robert Springer (Ed.) Publie avec Ie concours du Centre d'Etudes de la Traduction de l'Universite de Metz (CET) PETER LANG Bern· Berlin· Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main· New York· Oxford· Wien Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme The lyrics in African American popular music = Le texte dans la muslque populalre afro-americalne / publ. avec Ie concours du Centre d'Etudes de la Traduction de l'Unlverslte de Metz (CET). Robert Springer (ed.). - Bern; Berlin; Bruxelles ; Frankfurt am Main; New York; Oxford; Wien : Lang, 2001 ISBN 3-906766-61-6 British library and library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain, and from The Library of Congress, USA ISBN 3-906766-61-6 US-ISBN 0-8204-5335-8 © Peter Lang AG, European Academic Publishers, Bern 2001 Jupiterstr. 15, Postfach, 3000 Bern 15, SWitzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Germany Reachin' Pete and Johnny Nab: The Police in Commercial Blues Recordings to 1943 Chris SMITH References to the police in prewar commercial blues are not so rare as to be remarkable and yet the topic remains curiously under-discussed in studies of blues lyrics; Blues Fell This Morning, still the major work of the genre, contains a chapter entitled «Going to Take a Rap», but agents of law enforcement, like the policeman-Who arrests Ramblin' Thomas for «vag» (meaning vagrancy) in «No Job Blues»,l appear in that chapter only incidentally, and the word «police» does not appear in the book's index? The reasons for this probably include lack of space and, at the time of the first edition, lack of access to the relevant records. Consider ing the literature more generally, however, it seems to me that John and Alan Lomax's energetic promotion of Lead Belly as the icon and nonpareil of blues singers may have had an unintended consequence for scholarship. For many commentators from outside the culture, the typical - almost the stereotypical- African American encounter with law enfor cement became incarceration, viewed as a condition, rather than as part of a social process. As a result, blues about arrest and blues about quotid ian contact with the police have been much less considered than blues about trial and imprisonment. The most extensive discussion, in Paul Garon's polemical Blues and the Poetic Spirit,3 indicts the police as an RAMBLIN' THOMAS: «No Job Blues», Chicago, c. February 1928, Paramount 12609; reissued on Document DOCD-5107. Transcribed in Paul OLIVER: Blues Fell This Morning: Meaning in the Blues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, second edition, 1990), p. 195. 2 OLIVER: op cit. 3 Paul GARON: Blues and the Poetic Spirit (San Francisco: City Lights, second edition, 1996). 60 Chris Smith Reachin' Pete and Johnny Nab: the Police... 61 agency of social repression, but is chiefly concerned to make Freudian /~The scope of this paper is confined to commercial recordings made linkages between police in the blues, the controlling superego, and the up to 1943, for reasons having to do with the history of both recording father figure, viewed as either sexually repressive, as when Sleepy John and policing. Commercial recording came to a virtual halt for two years Estes sings: (;from July 1942, as a result of a prohibition (<<the Petrillo ban») by the American Federation of Musicians. 7 Coincidentally, it was in the early I wanna play marbles on my baby's marble ground, (x2) 4 I don't be worried with the Chief, I'm gonna move on the edge oftown. forties that the fight for the appointment of African-American police of- ficers in the South began to be won. A few Southern cities, none of them or benevolent-advisory, as when Peetie Wheatstraw reports that: in the Deep South, already employed African-American officers, but I heard somebody call me, it was the policeman on his beat, (x2) they were exceptions; up to 1943, and for some years afterwards, almost 8 Well, well now, he just wanted to tell me, ooh well, well, that I was driving on all Southern police forces were Jim Crow. Hence, Southern blues about the wrong side of the street. 5 policing up to 1943 seem likely to differ from both Northern blues up to Freudian theory aside, Garon appears not to have noted the implications 1943, and from later Southern blues, although the latter have not been examined for this paper. of this verse's context. It occurs in a song called «Crazy With The Blues», in which the singer's internal and external worlds are both very Non-commercial recordings, such as those collected by the Library of disturbed, to the point that he announces his intention to commit suicide Congress, or by the independent collector Lawrence Gellert, are exclud ed from consideration, because, as seems generally to have been ex in the final verse. So far from being an example of benevolence, 9 Wheatstraw presents the image of a policeman benignly informing an plained to the singers, they were not intended for a mass audience· African American motorist that he is committing a serious traffic offence Gellert, who encouraged his informants to be outspoken, offered anon; mity in exchange for recordings. 1O Most commercial blues recordings in as an example of «the world turned upside down». It is, indeed, very difficult to find a good word for the police in com the period under consideration also had a kind of anonymity of their mercial blues recordings. In 1927, Martha Copeland, Rosa Henderson own, of course. With a few exceptions (most notably, perhaps, Bessie and Lizzie Miles all recorded Tom Delaney's «Police Blues»,6 in which Smith), the industry did not sell blues records by constructing personality the police are summoned to rescue the singer from domestic violence cults around the artists, whose records were sometimes issued pseu but, that song aside, the content is overwhelmingly couched in terms of donymously, and often purchased far away from the singers' homes, by complaint, which is unsurprising, given the nature of policing as it was people who did not know them personally. Equally, however, to have a{ applied to African Americans in the twenties and thirties. record r~l~ased could be a source of local fame, especially in smaller commumtIes, and outspokenness had the potential to attract unwelcome attention. Commercial recordings, for all their impersonality, are, by I 4 THE DELTA Boys: «You Shouldn't Do That», Chicago, 24 September 1941 7 Robert M.W. DIXON and John GODRlCH: Recording the Blues (London: Studio I Bluebird B8852; reissued on Document DOCD-5016. Vista, 1970). 5 PEETIE WHEATSTRAW: «Crazy with the Blues», Chicago, 26 March 1937, Decca 8 W. Marvin DULANEY: Black Police in America (Bloomington and Indianapolis: 7348; reissued on Document DOCD-5244. Indiana University Press, 1996) passim. 6 For details of these recordings, see Robert M.W. DIXON, John GODRlCH, & 9 The frequent recorded announcements by field workers that the recordings are Howard W. RYE: Blues and Gospel Records 1890-1943 (Oxford: Clarendon being made for the Library of Congress seem to imply some prior explanation to Press, fourth edition, 1997). Other disco graphical citations in this essay are from the artists. the same source. The composer credit for «Police Blues» was supplied by 10 Bruce HARRAH-CONFORTH: notes to Heritage HT 304, «Nobody Knows My Howard Rye (personal communication). Name: Blues from South Carolina and Georgia». Reachin ' Pete and Johnny Nab: the Police ... 63 r-\ Chris Smith I 62 fired on several times. Despite its grim subject matter, the song is deli '\ their very nature, public statements which have an extended life, and it T vered in a jovial vocal style, somewhat influenced by Fats Waller and 1) seems reasonable to assume that the artists took this into account when accompanied by equally lively, and sub-Wallerian, piano playing. ' t~Q"mposing their lyrics. This paper examines the nature of, and the rea- Along with Houston and San Antonio, Galveston was one of the few sons for, the compromises that blues singers both made and did not make Southern cities to retain African American policemen after the failure of when singing about encounters with the police. Reconstruction, but these officers were not allowed to arrest white peo As a starting point, let us consider «House Raid Blues», recorded in ple or to patrol in white neighbourhoods. They have been well described San Antonio in 1937 by Andy Boy, from Galveston, Texas: as «quasi-police officers»12 and their marginal status was consistent with Now it was 'fore day in the morning when the shack got raided, the central purpose of the policing of African Americans in the South lp The women got scared, started to tippin' under the bed; t~e enforcement of legal segregation and its concomitant social oppres~ Policemen starts to whippin' all the darkies 'cross the head, My gal got scared, said, "Don't kili Andy Boy dead"; SlO~. ~dy Boy's song is simultaneously an explicit, and a disguised, I said, "Now, don't you worry, 'cause I ain't gon' be here long.