I was one of those English working class kids who was raised listening to the blues. I can’t recall how I got in to it exactly. My earliest memories I guess would be skiffle greats like Lonnie Donegan and then rock and roll greats Buddy Holly, then Elvis Presley and especially Little Richard.
The earliest blues folks I recall getting in to were Big Mama Thornton who I had the privilege of talking to at a table in a club here in Oakland before she died, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Mississippi John Hurt and Mississippi Fred McDowell. A lot of these folks came to Britain and they had such a huge effect on our music. Long John Baldry, the 6’7” British bluesman played a major role in getting the blues embedded in to British culture; it changed our music.
I blog about this not to write some sort of layman’s history of the blues but the political effect it had on me as I look back on it. One of my favorite American women singers of the blues and I guess Jazz, is Nina Simone. There was something powerful about Nina Simone, like she wasn’t the type of person who would take any shit.
I didn’t really consider myself to be a political person in those days, I wasn’t really aware of the depth of the racist regime in the US and that the black musicians that came over were unable to make a living here and were discriminated against terribly; I guess I knew about it in a way but it was in the recesses of my mind back then. I hadn’t heard Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit yet.
Nina Simone, like all black folks form the US did have to take “shit” and lots of it. But more than most, her life, and the horrific conditions for black folks in the US, came out through her song. What is Mississippi Goddamn but a powerful condemnation of racism in the US? It caused a considerable stir here and was not played in many states in the south. “I mean every word of it” Simone says. Another one of her songs Four Women, about four different stereotypes of African American women was another one of my favorites. I first heard that song though on an Album called Barbed Wire Sandwich, by a group of white rockers named Black Cat Bones. Could you imagine an American white rock band featuring two or three songs from a revolutionary black American artist on an album in 1969? I can’t somehow.
No matter how ruthless the oppression of any group, their condition is always expressed through song and art; the working class in general has its own culture and language that is constantly being suppressed, but we still get it out there. For hundreds of years the Irish were dominated by British occupation, were forbidden to speak their language or wear traditional clothes but this tiny island produced an abundance of great playwrights, poets authors and popular music.
The old country bluesmen like Big Bill Broonzy brought politics and history to me through songs like Black White and Brown that he sang accompanied by his acoustic guitar; I maybe was not so conscious of it at the time but I was receiving a history lesson that stuck with me. It is sort of a country rap as he tells of life in the south; getting a job, pay differentials, segregation. I learned about possums and ‘simmen trees from him. Leadbelly’s Bourgeois blues was another one, more overtly political I suppose due to his association with left wing figures like Guthrie and Seeger. The condition of black folks in the US was kept under wraps to a great extent by the US government until the civil rights explosion brought it out in to the world much to the embarrassment of the US government, that paragon of democracy and freedom. If my memory serves me right, the famous kissing case that Robert F Williams wrote about in "Negroes With Guns" was first broken open by a European reporter who happened to be in the area the time.
When I came to the US in 1973, I worked in a factory in Manhattan. I found myself in the company of lots of black guys, some younger some older. The older ones in particular were often musicians of one type or another. The conditions were pretty bad, salt tablets at the water fountain and oppressive heat. The old black dudes knew of Big Bill or Lighting Hopkins and folks like these. But many of the younger ones hadn’t heard of them; the occasional guy was a bit embarrassed by them even. It was in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, black pride, Malcolm X and Big Bill Broonzy and lighting Hopkins were old school.
Nina Simone was prominent in the civil rights movement but had left the country for a long time so was less known to younger people. Many young people today still don’t know of her. But she was a great artist, singer, piano player (since the age of three) and historian. She was a revolutionary woman and I owe her and a few others a great debt as they helped me understand the world I was living in much more clearly.
Here she is:
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