Outlandish Blues

Notes

N O T E S "The Battered Blues (i.Jones for my Blues)": I've been downhearted eversince the day we metcombines two lines from "How Blue Can You Get," a blues song written byJane Feather and recorded by B.B. King. "Don't Know What Love Is": Fm anevilgal/ don'tyou botherwith me, are lines from "Evil Gal Blues," written byLeonard Feather and Lionel Hampton and recorded by Dinah Washington. "Sarai Gives Hagar the Egyptian to Abram": Sarai's and Abram's nameswere changed to "Sarah" and "Abraham" shordy before the destruction of Sodom. Abraham is the uncle of Lot, and Hagar's son, Ishmael, is the ancestor of Zipporah, Moses' wife. "The Wife of Lot Has a Premonition of Her Death": Soon one morning/ Death come creeping in my room... are lines from a traditional spiritual. "Day Clean": Youcanrun/fora longtime... but Great GodAlmighty / can cutyou down are lines from a traditionalspiritual. "Outlandish Blues" contains a quote from Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation ofAfrican Identities in the Colonial andAntebellum South (Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 1998). The quote references a passage from George W Mullin's Flight andRebellion: Slave Resistance inEighteenth Century Virginia (New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1 91*)- "Now with the Morning": On February 19,1999, in Sylacauga, Alabama,Billy Jack Gaither, agaywhite man,was beaten to death by two other white men who took turns with an ax handle; then his attackersset his body on fire. Godgave Noah therainbow sign/ No more / water thefirenext time are lines from a traditional spiritual. "Incident at Cross Plains (The Lynching of William Luke, 1870)": Luke, a white Northerner, had traveledSouth to work at Talladega College, anAlabama school founded in 1867 to educate freed slaves. He and his black posse were seized and lynched together by a white mob who found Luke guilty of selling weapons to the black townspeople to protect themselves from the white nightriders. The mob found the black posse guilty of protecting Luke. He was given permission to pray and write a letter to his wife before he was hanged. "Unidentified Female Student, Former Slave (Talladega College, circa 1885)": College archival records indicate that this young woman worked for her tuition , room, and board for two years.There are no records of her after 1887. "Aretha at Fame Studios": The lines, You're a nogood heartbreaker/ You're a liarand you're a cheat, are from "I Never Loved a Man," written by Ronny Shannon and recorded byAretha Franklin. Fame studios is home of "Muscle Shoals Soul," the distinctive Rhythm and Blues sound associated with Atlantic Records. Many recording artists, including Little Richard and Junior Walker and the All Stars, traveled to Alabama to record with the white studio musicians of Fame, despite the fact that Little Richard insisted "R and B means real black." A B O U T T H E A U T H O R Honoree FanonneJeffers has won awards from the Ronajaffe Foundation, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. She has also won theJulia Peterkin Award for Poetry. Her first book, TheGospel of Barbecue, was chosen by Lucille Clifton as winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Prize for Poetry. She teaches at the University of Oklahoma. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Jeffers, Honoree Fanonne, 1967Oudandish blues / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. p. cm. — (Wesleyan poetry) ISBN 0-8195-6583-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8195-6584-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) i. AfricanAmericans—Poetry. I. Tide. II. Series. pS356o.E365O98 2003 8n'.6—dczi 2002154353 ...