In Steven Tracy’s discussion of performance conditions for African Americans, he cites Blind Blake’s “Third Degree Blues” (Pm12867) from 1929 featuring descriptive lyrics of the treatment of African Americans “…they put me in jail, didn’t give me no bond. It made me think of my people’s that’s dead and gone.”206 Tracy reads this as a lyrical reference to the era of slavery, which is plausible, but possibly also displaced by the Migration. Regardless of the “dead and gone” Blake referenced, he was lyrically describing a retrospective event associated with police mistreatment. This was atypical of Blake’s usual lyrics that were often humorous, employing gallows humor typical of other downhome blues artists like Jefferson and McTell.
206 Steven Tracy, “ ‘Black Twice’: Performance Conditions for Blues and Gospel Artists”
in Allan F. Moore, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 91.
Figure 10. Blind Blake’s only known photograph on a Paramount record sleeve.
Audio 3. Blind Blake “He’s In The Jailhouse Now” clip
The promotional for Blake’s “He’s in the Jailhouse Now” (Pm12565) from 1927 features his only known photograph, like many other advertisements for the musicians (Figure 10). The image shows a man who resembles Blake with a guitar. This demonstrates an interest in production that described incarceration by blind downhome musicians. The advertisement has the caption “Why is he there? Well, wait till you hear the one and only Blind Blake tell you about it.” The song is in a major key, humorous, and playful with lyrics that describe his brother being imprisoned
for voting twice in a presidential election. In the next verse Blake sings of murdering a woman who tried to pickpocket him at a bar after they had dozens of rounds of drinks, which all sounds quite playful. In a simple melody as he sings, “She’s in the graveyard now, She’s in the graveyard now” but in the next chorus, he changes his mind and his refrain locates her in the jailhouse. Unlike the image, the narrator, or Blake, is never in the jailhouse.
A year later Jimmie Rodgers recorded his version of the song, “In The Jailhouse Now.” The song was circulating by performers across racial divisions despite the segregated era. It served as an excellent platform to tell humorous stories at the expense of foolhardy criminals. Rodgers adds his signature yodel which differentiates his version from the five of other recordings of the song before 1930.207
Blake’s “What a Lowdown Place the Jailhouse Is” (Pm13016) from 1930 is another example of this, as well as Jefferson’s “Blind Lemon’s Penitentiary Blues” (Pm12666),“’Lectric Chair Blues” (Pm12608), and “Prison Cell Blues” (Pm12622) from 1928 and McTell’s “Death Cell Blues” (Vo02577) from later in 1933. In 1937, Fuller recorded “Put You Back in Jail” (De7903) and a year later “Big House Bound” (Vo04897). These demonstrate the topical prevalence of the unjust legal system as a theme of the musicians’ recordings. A year later Fuller went to prison for shooting his wife in the leg.208 Blind Teddy Darby “spent a year in a reformatory
207 Jim Jackson “In The Jailhouse Now” (Vocalion) 2/27, Blind Blake “He’s In the
Jailhouse Now” (Paramount) 11/27, Jimmie Rodgers “In The Jailhouse Now” (Victor) 2/28, Boyd Senter’s Senterpedes “In The Jailhouse Now” (Victor) 2/29, Hobo Jack Turner “In The Jailhouse Now” (Columbia) 2/29, Memphis Sheiks “He’s in Jailhouse Now” (Victor) 11/30,.
208 Derek Bright, Highway 61: Crossroads on the Blues Highway (Stroud, Gloucestershire:
and a year in a city workhouse for illegal moonshine transportation.”209 In an interview with Wardlow, Ishmon Bracey recalls Blind Lemon Jefferson spending time in Parchman farm for “shooting dice and shooting a man.”210 Blind Joe Reynolds was incarcerated multiple time in the Louisiana and Arkansas State Penitentiary and admitted to the “shooting of an uncle, and of one white man” according to Wardlow.211 These confessions suggest Reynolds’ idea of self-promotion included constructing himself as an outlaw, regardless of whether the crimes were committed. His recorded music is filled with misogynistic lyrics of womanizing, yet he feigned to be a preacher. Darby in contrast, became a preacher after his piano accompanist cousin was murdered in 1937.212
While imprisonment may have related to the controversial predominant incarceration rates of African American men and women in the United States, the metaphoric space of imprisonment may have been relevant to the musicians. This would involve confinement to spaces of disabling social structures. The musicians’ prison-themed blues were preceded by Bessie Smith’s 1923 “Jailhouse Blues” (CoA4001) and her 1927 “Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair Blues” (Co14209). This reinforces that the classic and downhome blues had themes in common despite classifications that suggest there were significant differences within the subgenres.
Blind Joe Reynolds recorded shortly after Willie Davis’s “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home” session in the same Wisconsin studio. He recorded four songs at his first session in November 1929 in the hokum style, singing about “his big fat mama” and “outside woman.” However, he also sings of mobility, “Lord I’m going away mama, where you're off my mind, because you keep
209 Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, and John A. Hardin, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 134.
210 Ishmon Bracey Interview with Gayle Wardlow, Jackson, Ms. May 26, 1968, Center for
Popular Music Archives , Middle Tennessee State Univerisity.
211 Wardlow and Komara, Chasin' That Devil Music Searching for the Blues, 171. 212 Smith, McDaniel, and Hardin, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia, 134.
me worried and bothered all the time.” Mobility was a theme present in the musicians’ gospel and hokum recordings. Reynolds produced his second and last session in Memphis a year later for Victor records under the pseudonym Blind Willie Reynolds. The musicians who did not sell often disappeared from recording during the Depression years. Reynolds did not experience early blindness but rather was shot in the face with a shotgun as a young man.
3.3 PENTECOSTALISM: BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON, ARIZONA DRANES, BLIND