UPDATED JULY 17 2016
In my book ‘America’s Gift’, I quote the American Blues historian, David K. Bradford, writing about the nineteenth century African-American street evangelist, Charles Haffer. Born in the 1870s, Charles Haffer was a blind Delta balladeer and songwriter from Mississippi who astutely linked the emergence of blues to the guitar’s new popularity among black musicians in the 1890s. The guitar was the latest trend. There was nothing linking it with traditional black instruments like the banjo and violin, Haffer said. And nobody called what we know as blues music, ‘the blues’.
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| Convicts in chains circa 1910. 15 years earlier, Joe Turner would trap up to 80 convicts at a time and hire them out illegally as work gangs, resulting in the subject of probably the earliest known blues. |
“I used to sing all the old jump-up songs”, Haffer said. “The blues weren’t in style then. We called them reels. The first blues I remember originated from a sheriff named Joe Turner. He was a kind-a bad man and if he goes after you, he’d bring you (in). His blues was very famous.”
I’ve been doing a bit of research on Joe Turner recently, in the search for that very first blues remembered by Charlie Haffer. It turns out that Joe Turner was an almost mythical figure in the black South, during the late nineteenth century, ands behaviour, both appalling and illegal, became the subject of what could well be the oldest blues song yet known. In 1915, the blues’ most iconic pioneer, W.C. Handy, wrote a song called ‘Joe Turner Blues’, based on an old folk song he said he’d first heard in 1895. This old song was certainly the same song Charles Haffer mentioned, about a ‘bad’ sheriff who transported convicts in chains. Handy, a great collector of rural black folk music, as many of you know, was the first person to call such music, ‘folk blues’. While Handy totally changed the lyrics for his Joe Turner Blues, the song’s structure was pretty close to the original.
(Handy’s Joe Turner, of course, had nothing to do with that great Kansas City blues shouter and early rock & roll pioneer, Big Joe Turner, who was only four-years-old when Handy wrote the song in 1915, while still based in Beale Street, Memphis.)
W.C. Handy’s spoke about Joe Turner Blues in an interview he gave for a collection of ‘Negro Folk Rhymes’ by Scarborough and Gulledge in 1925, saying:
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| W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, in 1892, aged about 20 |
“That is written around an old Negro song I used to hear and play thirty or more years ago (in 1895). In some sections (regions) it was called ‘Going Down The River for Long’, but in Tennessee it was always ‘Joe Turner’. Joe Turner, the inspiration of the song, was a brother of Pete Turner, once Governor of Tennessee. He (Joe) was an officer and he used to come to Nashville after a Kangaroo Court. When the Negroes said of anyone, ‘Joe Turner’s been to town’, they meant that the person in question had been carried off handcuffed, to be gone no telling how long.”
“Here you get folklore with a bang. It goes back to Joe Turney (also called Turner) brother of Pete Turney, one-time governor of Tennessee. Joe had the responsibility of taking Negro prisoners from Memphis to the penitentiary at Nashville. Sometimes he took them to the ‘farms’ along the Mississippi. Their crimes, when indeed there were any crimes, were usually very minor, the object of the arrests being to provide needed labor for spots along the river. As usual, the method was to set a stool-pigeon where he could start a game of craps. The bones would roll blissfully till the required number of laborers had been drawn into the circle. At that point the law would fall upon the poor devils, arrest as many as were needed for work, try them for gambling in a kangaroo court and then turn the culprits over to Joe Turney. That night, perhaps, there would be weeping and wailing among the dusky belles. If one of them chanced to ask a neighbor what had become of the sweet good man, she was likely to receive the pat reply, ‘They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone’. Repeat this line three times and you get what I’ve called folk blues. Living in a world of such amazing cruelty, bewildered by the doings of such men as Joe Turney, this simple people either sang or played whatever came into their minds.”
“He come wid forty links of chain, Oh Lawdy!
Come wid forty links of chain, Oh Lawdy!
Got my man and gone.
Take a listen to this rare track: 1915’s Joe Turner Blues by W.C. Handy:
Handy’s autobiography continues: “Turney had a way of handcuffing eighty prisoners to forty links of chain, and from this situation grew many kinds of verses, all fitting the same musical mould. In Kentucky they call it, ‘Goin’ Down the River ‘Fore Long’. There it was a steamboat song, but for the tune it was Joe Turner right on. In Georgia you heard the same melody when they sang, ‘Goin’ Down That Long Lonesome Road’. You heard it all over the South, for that matter, but wherever it was sung the words dealt with a local situation.”
Dorothy Scarborough told Handy, in her 1925 interview with the famous blues pioneer, how she recalled a fragment of the original Joe Turner folk-song from the South, which she had never before understood. She quoted it to Handy.
“Dey tell me Joe Turner’s come to town.
He’s brought along one thousand links of chain;
He’s gwine to have one nigger for each link;
He’s gwine to have dis nigger for one link.”
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| Civil War Confederate army officer and Tennessee Governor, Pete Turney, brother of the dreaded Joe Turney (aka Joe Turner). |
Dey tell me Joe Turner he done come,
Got my man an’ gone.
Dey tell me Joe Turner he done come,
Dey tell me Joe Turner he done come,
Come with fohty links of chain.”
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| W.C. Handy in later life |
While Joe Turney was known to have transported convicts in chains in to have transported convicts in chains in Tennessee,between 1892 and 1896, Mudcat also informed me about a stockade in Tennessee, built around 1891, called Joe Turney branch prison. Joe was the brother of Peter Turney, Governor of Tennessee from 1893 to 1897 and born in Jasper, Tennessee, in 1827. According to Wikipedia, Joe “used his political connections to run a chain gang for financial gain, inspiring a famous blues song ‘Joe Turner’.”
| Big Bill was second only to W.C. Handy as an influence on modern blues |
Wrote one of America’s first blues authorities, the white music scholar and Wall Street lawyer, Abbe Niles, in 1926: “Many verses in the folklore are in the blues spirit, yet are excluded from the blues form … (by) the singer’s own distinction. In this usage, it was only the verses that could be fitted to the (conventional) three-cornered (three-line) turns like Joe Turner (perhaps the archetypical blues song) that came to be called ‘blues’, and, conversely, they would say of a new melody to which they could not sing one of their three-line verses, ‘That ain’t no blues’.”
Hello Paul,
The usual rough dates given for when Pete Turney transported prisoners are old speculation based (for little good reason, when you think about it) on when his brother happened to be governor. I've found a newspaper article showing that he was already doing it in 1888. (Carroll County _Democrat_, Dec. 7, 1888.)
Handy also recalled "Got No More Home Than A Dog" as a "blues" he had heard in about 1895, and he made a guitar and vocal recording of it himself in 1938. (Handy pointed out more than once, because he was old enough to know, that no one was actually calling these kinds of songs "blues" songs back in about 1895 — consistent with the recollection of Haffer and others. Mentioning the word "blues" became popular in black folk songs in about 1907, about a whole 12 years after 12-bar tunes had become popular with black folk musicians. As a result, people began talking about "blues" music in about 1909.) Judging from various evidence, Mary Wheeler's book _Steamboatin' Days_ seems to center on songs of the 1890s (she deliberately sought out black singers much older than herself, and she was born in 1892), and although songs with two-line stanzas dominate the book, some are AAA or AAB, and some are notably similar to "Got No More Home Than A Dog."
It's been well established that Broonzy was born in 1903. We don't know whether Handy was the first person to use the expression "folk blues."
You wrote: "No other folk song currently known compares to Joe Turner Blues as a model for all the rural blues songs that followed." We don't know. We don't know how old the "Chilly Winds" and "Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" families of songs were, for instance. "Joe Turner" fits into the bad man ballad mold, it being about a bad man, whereas "Chilly" and "Poor" and "Got No" were very first-person-oriented, just as 1910s blues music was. In any case, there's no evidence anyone stuck the word "blues" into a variant of any of these songs until about 1906. For 1903 and earlier, we've got Charles Peabody, Anne Hobson, and the Thomas brothers combined (among others) giving us lots of black folk songs, some of which are 12-bar, e.g., and none of which have the word "blues" in them.
This folk song was collected by Howard Odum by 1908 and published by him as "Knife-Song":
"… 'Fo' long, honey, 'fo' long, honey,
'Fo' long, honey, 'fo' long, honey,
L-a-w-d, la-w-d, la-w-d!
… I hate to hear my honey call my name,
Call me so lonesome an' so sad.
L-a-w-d, l-a-w-d, l-a-w-d!
I got de blues an' can't be satisfied,
Brown-skin woman cause of it all.
L-a-w-d, l-a-w-d, l-a-w-d!
That woman will be the death o' me,
Some girl will be the death o' me.
L-a-w-d, l-a-w-d, l-a-w-d! …"
Odum also collected a song with related, AAAB lyrics by 1908:
"So she laid in jail back to de wall
So she laid in jail back to de wall
So she laid in jail back to de wall
Dis brown-skin man cause of it all."
On available evidence, mentioning having the "blues" in a black folk song in about 1907 may have had no particular association at the time with AAA, AAB, AAAB, or couplet and refrain.
Abbe Niles first heard a blues in 1913, and much of what he wrote about before 1913 would have been restating what his close friend Handy told him he recalled.
Supposing we say that anything that's apparently related to the 1910s blues songs and is 12-bar is a "blues," then we've got "The Bully" which is apparently from about 1892.
Hi Joseph. I’ve only just discovered your fascinating comment of March last year. I can only apologise for missing it. Unforgivable. Many thanks for your insight. It is much appreciated. I’m currently in the middle of a crossover between blog spot and word press so I’m in a bit of a blogging mess at the moment.
Thanks for your invaluable input, Joseph. Your knowledgeable comments are very much appreciated. (I've just deleted a previous version of this message because of a typo, by the way.) My apologies for such a late reply but I've only just stumbled upon your message. Unfortunately my 'Notify Me' box wasn't ticked so I wasn't, of course, notified about your comments.