The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing

Jimmy Martin: TRUE ADVENTURES WITH THE KING OF BLUEGRASS

than jump right up and quit me Happiness, it never lasts a day, my heart is almost breaking while I say A good man is hard to find, you always get the other kind Just when you think that he is your pal, you look for him and find him fooling ’round some other gal Then you rave, you even crave to see him laying in his grave InspiredbyBessie’ssong,FlanneryO’Connorconstructedherdevastatingshort story of a maddening old woman and an equally maddening misfit. About which Flannery said: “This story . . . certainly calls up a good deal of the South’s mythic background,anditshouldelicitfromyouadegreeofpityandterror,eventhough its way of being serious is a comic one.” When a woman straddles the abyss while keenly aware of absurdity, her powers are unmatched. People say that men tell jokes and women tell stories. They say womenforgetpunchlines.Menperformandwomenspectate.Sciencehasproven thatwomen’slaughter—onaverageanoctavehigherthanmen’s—isacoustically akintosong.Bessie’ssenseofhumorisagreatbigtunnelthroughwhichherpowerful voice pours. Some of the musicians who revered her: Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone. Janis Joplin was convinced—it was the ’60s—that shewasBessie Smith reincarnated. Quote: Bessie “showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.” Here are some of her early titles: DownHeartedBlues,GulfCoastBlues,OhDaddyBlues,BleedingHeartedBlues, Lady Luck Blues, Yodeling Blues, Midnight Blues, Jail-House Blues, Graveyard Dream Blues, Sam Jones Blues, Cemetery Blues, Far Away Blues, Any Woman’s Blues, Chicago Bound Blues, Frosty Morning Blues, Haunted House Blues, Eavesdropper’sBlues,EasyCome,EasyGoBlues,SorrowfulBlues,HatefulBlues, Boweavil Blues, Rocking Chair Blues. (These titles are from Volume 1 of The Complete Recordings.) (Who, I wonder, is Sam Jones?) Here are some later titles from Volume 4: 18 THE OXFORD AMERICAN 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 18 EmptyBedBlues,Washwoman’sBlues,PoorMan’sBlues,WastedLifeBlues,Dirty No-Gooder’s Blues, Blue Spirit Blues, Worn Out Papa Blues, Blue Blues, Shipwreck Blues. Ifyoujustreadthetitlesinherdiscography,youwilldefinitelystarttofeellousy. SheplayedwithLouisArmstrong,BennyGoodman.Louis’scornet—perky,modest , richly toned—is a perfect echo of Bessie’s wood-grained voice. Some critics assert that her voice approximates the horn. It is possible to speculate that her gift was like a spirit around which she just had to pucker up and blow. She drank excessively, preferring home-brewed concoctions to more refined, factory-sealedsubstances.Shewasrambunctious.Ifyoureadanyoftheaccounts of her life (Chris Albertson’s masterful, highly readable Bessie is the definitive source),you’llascertainthatshehadoneofthoselove/hateconnectionswithJack Gee,hersecondhusband(thefirstonedied),apetty,pompousscoundrel.Though he roughed her up, he seems more like a kept man than a king lording over her. Sure, while she was touring he’d frequently bust in on her—his fists hungry for contact—but she devised an excellent system of clever escapes, not to mention expertsilencingofhercloseallies.Onatleasttwooccasions,shedispatchedhim, athisrequest,toaspainHotSprings,Arkansas,tosoothehisnerves.Ifhewanted money(hehadnojobtospeakof),hewasobligedtoaskhersister,themeanone, forwhateveramountBessiefeltcomfortablewith.Guiltsometimesdroveherto buy him baubles, including a 1926 custom-built Cadillac. Pugnacious is a word that crops up frequently when you start to explore the legendofBessieSmith .Notlongaftershebecamehuge(andherrags-to-richesvelocitywasstaggering ),shemovedtomyownhometown,Philadelphia.Atsomepoint, possibly posthumously, she was dubbed “Philadelphia’s favorite daughter.” I remember a rare family trip to South Philly to bestow Christmas gifts on the housemaidwho’draisedusuntilsheretiredandhowshehushedustohearasong on the radio. She said that, like Bessie Smith, she came up from the South and madeahomeinPhilly.Ifyouwantmystory,shesaid,listentothismusic.Ihadno idea who Bessie Smith was and her music didn’t make a dent on me. It may have beenthatyearthatourmaidlostherdaughterinahorrificcaraccidentthatdecapitatedher .Itwasthedetailinthatstory—thedecapitation—thatmadeusallache. Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer, Bessie wallers, but it doesn’t sound sloppy or crass. Despite the stories about her appetites and foul mouth, she sounds classy. The singer of her songs wasn’t: aggressive, meek, corny, skinny, obese, horny, frigid.Butneitherdidshetoeanylineofmoderation.Shewasmerelyherself.They BOOK OF GREAT MUSIC WRITING 19 1SMIRNOFF_pages.qxd 8/27/08 10:43 AM Page 19 say she had an appetite for chitterlings and that when she was touring she would cook up batches in the boardinghouse and feed the entire supporting cast (chorus girls, magicians, jugglers, etc.) and even the prop boys. Idon’tknowsmackaboutphrasing,chords,andpitch,butthesoundBessiemakes is of exquisite accuracy. One-syllable words become sentences, paragraphs. The vowels luxuriate. LangstonHughessaid:“LettheblareofNegrojazzbandsandthebellowingvoice of Bessie Smith penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals. . . .” James Baldwin, a great admirer, remembered “playing her till I fell asleep.” When it comes to music, we project what we most crave onto its makers. When welistentocertaintunes—andplaythemforourfriends—wearemakingastatement of who we are or who we want to be. Like Hughes and Baldwin, Bessie was black, brazen, and her sexual preferences...