Dink: A Pre-Blues Musician—Transcription
By Cecelia Conway
Dink Roberts is 79 and lives in the piedmont
near Haw River, N.C., with his wife Lily,
son James and grandson Mike. Playing music has
been as much of Dink’s livelihood as
farming, working on the railroad, cutting
cutting pulpwood, and hunting. In the old days he
played for dances as often as six nights a week.
Dink survives the many black banjo pickers
who flourished before the turn of the century
and the emergence of the blues. He first
learned his music from his uncle who raised
him. Dink’s banjo style, shared by other
black banjo players, is known as clawhammer
in the Va.-N.C. region.
The currency of this banjo style
among 19th century blacks may
suggest that this style as well as
this African derived instrument
passed from piedmont blacks to
whites,
DINK (playing and singing “Fox Chase,” under the following list of songs in the film)
Old Lady was named Sue.
Old man was still laying in the bed.
Old Lady said, “Get up and get Old Rattler.”
Old rooster said, “Cack, cup cack.”
Said, “Son, go on down there.”
Say, “Your mammy’s about to worry me to death.
Get your horn and go down
towards the bee gum
and call old Rattler here.”
. . . back down to the bee gum and called Old Rattler.
Old Rattler did something like this. (illustrates on banjo).
When he come back across the holler,
He just kept on down the holler like this. (illustrates on banjo).
Says, “Son, head on down…
Say, “Go back in the house and get my old banjo,
Put on the skillet. Put on the lid.
. . .
Cook some shortnin’ bread.”
The Music
1. Fox Chase—standard spoken or shouted
narrative describing the sounds of the hunt,
usually played on the harmonica, and the
first piece learned by Dink.
2. Down to the Spring: dance piece
3. Fox Chase (cont.), last stanza:
Fox looked back in the east
And saw the sun rising
“God bless my red-eyed time
Done set the world on fire.”
4. Mame: song composed by Dink for guitar.
5. Jaybird pulling the shovel
Sparrow pulling a harrow
I bet my bottom dollar
Won’t pull it tomorrow
--dance piece.
6. John Henry—Dink’s version an early slide-guitar blues more lyric than narrative
7. Black Eyed Daisy: dance piece
8. Black Annie: a banjo call and response song
(cuts from “Fox Chase” to sync footage with birds tweeting and “Down to the Spring”)
DINK (singing)
Down to the spring,
Down to the spring, my love.
Down to the spring,
Down to the spring, my love.
Get a little drink of water.
What you say, banjo? (banjo music replies)
DINK: I’m motherless child, goin’ from door to door.
CECE CONWAY: Un-hunh.
DINK: My mama died when I was nine years old. My uncle raised me. ‘Course he treated me nice. Bound to give it to him. He didn’t make no difference between his children and us. That’s the truth. But wouldn’t have been many people would’ve done it.
DINK: (continuing “Fox Chase”)
Old Rattler and Son sitting up on the top of the hill
With his daddy.
And his daddy, daddy looked back at the horse.
“Pap.” “What you want, son?”
“You reckon that dog got the fox?
Reckon the dog got that fox?"
“Go away from here, you cotton-eyed fool--
Gonna run him all night.”
[Fox] Looked back in the east,
Saw the sun arising,
“God bless my red-eyed time.
I believe I set the world on fire.” ♪
DINK: That’s a good one, ain’t it?
CHEYNEY HALES:
That is a good one. Many foxes around here?
DINK: Used to be. There ain’t many now. Un-hunh.
LEE SLOAN: Got a lot ‘coons round here, don’t you?
DINK: ‘Coons come scattling by sometimes.
LEE: You go ‘coon hunting anymore, Dink?
DINK: No, I can’t stand it now. Can’t see at night. Fall down. Can’t see. I–I’d have to
have a lantern, you know.
DINK (calling down the road) Boy, let’s go.
TOMMY THOMPSON (narrator):
Dink has always kept hounds, and horses.
(Dink’s grandson Mike comes riding up on a horse)
CECE: Here comes Mike.
TOMMY: Sixteen-year-old Mike Roberts has inherited his granddaddy’s love of
horses, and music.
DINK: (to Mike): Come on. Woah!
TOMMY: Mike enjoys playing Chuck Berry tunes.
CECE: What’s the best horse you ever had Dink?
DINK: Lordy mercy, I used to have one that would make a mile a minute.
CECE: What was the name of that one?
DINK: That was, uh… Can’t think his name—Henry.
DINK: I tell you, I used to play for the white folks three nights, for the colored three nights. You sit and do this here—that old, you know—he got his head on your shoulder…(laughter)
CECE: Oh, you had to do a slow dance then, hunh?
DINK: (laughing) That’s right! That’s the truth. I ain’t just sitting here telling no story. That’s the God’s truth.
(Dink dances to banjo played by Tommy. Two girl visitors from the Carolina Friends School try to copy his steps)
CECE: Well, did you get to dance or did you have to play?
DINK: No. Didn’t want to dance, you know. I didn’t want to dance. I didn’t want to dance. You take my partner, I take yourn. You know, a hand set, hands-up-eight set now, understand. But now, when you went to that slow dragging, I didn’t like that so much. Didn’t like that.
CECE: Dink, that song “Mame.”
DINK: I made that up myself.
TOMMY: Play that “Mame.”
(Dink starts playing a guitar.)
TOMMY: Dink composed this bluesy ballad after a train ride to Winston-Salem, where he met Miss Mamie Powell. Here he plays slide guitar with a pocket knife and tells of the sad departure from home.
DINK (playing and breaking into a narrative, delivered halfway between speaking and singing):
Old folks—they made me. They’s awful cruel.
“Yonder, boy, come here,” said, “Dink.” I said, “Yeah.”
“If I’s you, I’d leave home.” I decided I would.
Didn’t have nothing to put my clothes in but a little flour sack.
Hid ‘em out on the front-way bushes.
Old folks thought I was going to Sunday School when I was leaving home.
Get on the bus, get on a train--ain’t taken a train before in my life.
I was looking back, with tears in my eyes,
scared the old folks gonna go get me, make me come back home.
Heard the train blow like . . . (makes train whistle three times on his guitar)
He rolled up in the yard like this . . . (sound of train rolling down the track)
Pulled up in the yard and got his water,
and pulled out again for Glen Raven
and commenced doing like this . . . (imitating on guitar)
Got on up about two miles, he blowed again . . . (imitating whistle 3 or 4 times)
‘Course I wasn’t going no further than Winston.
Got in Greensboro. We changed trains.
That’s the way you go, you change trains, you change whistles.
Got on up the road about ten miles he done like . . . (demonstrating on guitar)
What you say guitar? (guitar replies)
(aside, speaking) I used to do it, boy, but I can’t do it now!
Well, I wasn’t going no farther’n Winston.
I got in Winston, went walking on down the street.
She was eyeballing me, next I eyeball some woman back.
I said, “Miss, stranger going into town.”
Me and her thinking we like to get together.
Me and her went walking on down the street like this (demonstrates on the guitar)
She was named Miss Mamie Powell.
I rest my hat, thought I was going to have a nice time.
Yaba Yaba. [sound of knocking at the door]
Come back here and knock on the door again.
She said, “Don’t pay that boy any mind. He do that every night.”
He call again. I didn’t like that so much.
I looked out the window and nigh as I could see, look like he had a .44.
May be the window, it may be the door,
May be the cat hole—I don’t know.
But if there’s man comin’ in this house, I’m going out!
(laughter)
CHEYNEY: You were playing for dances and things. How long would you play,
how long would a set be sometimes?
DINK: Oh, we’d play about maybe an hour.
CHEYNEY: Hour? How long ago was that, you were playing?
DINK: Oh, Lord. that’s been years ago, that’s been a long time. Long time. I used to leave on Christmas Eve and never come back home till after New Year.
CHEYNEY: Would you play all that time?
DINK: No, we wouldn’t be playing all the time, you know. We’d ride around, have a little fun.
TOMMY: Dink’s banjo music is especially important, because only a handful of black banjo pickers have been recorded. The few still living seem, like Dink, to be nearly eighty years old. They learned their tunes and banjo styles before the blues arose to capture the imaginations of black musicians.
DINK: (playing and singing)
Jaybird pulling the shovel,
Sparrow pulling a harrow.
I’ll bet my bottom dollar
I won’t pull it tomorrow.
TOMMY: This song assembles four verses about animals and people with unusual attributes—jaybirds that shovel, sparrows that pull harrows, blind cats that seem to see, a baby with a mustache, a talented little gal with a red dress on.
(Note: Earlier Cece and Tommy had sung “Three Nights Drunk” to Dink. He got a kick out of the “baby with a mustache” and improvised it into his song this day.)
DINK: (singing)
His mama had a cat,
As blind as it could be.
Every time that supper came
I believe that cat could see.
I’ve traveled, traveled forty years ago—
Traveled forty years ago,
But I’ve never seen a baby child
With a mustache on before.
TOMMY: Dink plays clawhammer banjo, alternately striking down on the strings with the nail of the right forefinger and plucking up with the thumb. This alternation provides the steady rhythm through which the melody is woven. The clawhammer style survives among white banjo pickers throughout the Southeast.
DINK: (continuing the song)
Hey, who’s been here since I’ve been gone?
It’s little bitty girl with a red dress on.
(aside: She could do that all night.)
Ah, my fingers so stiff I can’t hardly get down there to get it. That’s right. I know I missed a little, but I know I can do it! Well, get to it! (laughs)
Wasn’t no beer then.
LILY: It was liquor then.
DINK: Liquor! Get that—get a keg about that high, about the size of that stove—bigger than that stove. That was lager beer.
LILY: Liquor. Wasn’t it liquor?
DINK: No, lager beer. And that was—that was good beer.
DINK: (with guitar, performing “John Henry,” an early blues more lyric than narrative) John Henry said to his captain
‘Fore he left town,
“Give me one drink of your cool lager beer.
I’m going to whip it on down, my Lord.”
TOMMY: James [who is talking with Laurel Urton], a fine dancer, does both the old-time clog on the heels and the more modern on-the-toe tap dancing.
DINK: (continuing the song)
John Henry was a little baby boy
Sitting on his mother’s knee,
Takes up his hammer and a little piece of steel,
“Mama, it’s going be the death of me, my Lord,
Gonna be the death of me.”
John Henry got sick in the bed… (James dances)
(guitar plays phrases of the tune)
Way down, John Henry hit,
John Henry hit one lick.
The rock was so hard, and John Henry was so small,
He laid down his hammer and he died.
CECE: What’s cooking in there, Lily?
LILY: Beef and chicken and ‘taters.
CECE: What’s the best thing to eat?
LILY: Chicken and ‘taters and beef.
DINK: (continuing “John Henry”)
Came from the west,
Came from the east,
Came from the north,
Well, I’m going where my man fell dead, my Lord,
Going where my man fell dead.
If I miss this piece of steel,
‘Morrow be your burying day.
‘Morrow be your burying day.
Ain’t that a good one.
CECE: How long does it take that to cook?
LILY: They don’t need but about five minutes.
CECE: That’s good.
LILY: (drops pot lid and mutters about it)
CHEYNEY: What’s hoe cake?
DINK: Hoe cake’s a piece of cornbread about like your hand. That’s hoe cake.
CECE: Can you make good cornbread?
DINK: Oh, sure.
CECE: Do you make it in a pan or in a skillet?
DINK: Make it in a pan, and pat it out, piece about like your hand, and put it in there, grease come over the top of it. You got something good.
CECE: What do you like to have with that best?
DINK: Beans or cabbage, or something like—cabbage.
CECE: You like that salad?
DINK: Yeah, that salad—that poke salad, what you talking about! That’s something good.”
CECE: (to Dink’s grandson Mike, who is entering) Hi, Mike.
MIKE: Hi.
CECE: What was that you were saying about the poke coming up?
DINK: See, poke. Twelve days from Christmas morning poke will rise, and then it’ll go back down in the ground. That’s right.
CECE: So you got to get it quick if you want to eat it?
DINK: No, you don’t want that thing. You don’t want it.
CECE: You don’t eat it?
DINK: You don’t want that then. You don’t want that.
CECE: What about, what were you saying about horses?
DINK: On Christmas Day, and twelve days after Christmas, the horses will get down on their knees and pray too. That’s true!
CECE: They can talk? They can talk in their own way?
DINK: Well, they talk in they language. They have a word, “Nhhhh.” (imitating a whinny) Like that. That’s right! You may think I ain’t telling the truth, but that’s the God’s truth.
CECE: Did you ever see ‘em?
DINK: Yeah, I have saw them many a time. And you know God didn’t mean a man to see all things but the dumb brutes. And the wind would get so high look like it was going blow the barn and everything down. And we’d go back to the house. That’s the truth. So He give dog his knowledge. Give horses knowledge, just like the sheep, goats. Way back yonder when the goats was up on the hill eating green grass and everything, here comes a—I can’t think of the name of the thing—he have two—one horn right up in the front of its forehead. And he spoke to them and said, “Why are you coming across my trip-trap bridge?” And the goats said, “We going up on the hill and eat green grass and get fat.” And with that, long-horn he said, “Don’t come tripping ‘cross my bridge.” And he killed ‘em! That’s right.
CECE: And is one of those characters named Billy Goat Gruff?
DINK: Yeah, and you know that’s Billy! That come out of old Second Reader. Second Reader. I couldn’t read. You know, the other people could. But I was about twelve. He had one horn right in the fore forehead. And this troll—there was a troll under the bridge. And the troll didn’t allow nothing to come across that bridge. So you know the troll killed Billy. Billy Goat started cross the bridge. And the troll stepped out, said, “Where you going?” to the Billy. Said, “I’m going up on the green hill and go eat green grass and get fat.” He said, “You won’t be tripping-trapping across my bridge.” You could just see it good on the Second Reader. And that’s where I got it at. You know, lot of people’d read it to me. And I got it in my mind. A goat. You know, a goat. Lot of people say it’s a ghost. Ghost, ghost, ghost. Understand? That’s when they spoke to us, said, “Don’t come tripping across my bridge.” Said to the goat. Says, “Where you going?” Said, “I’m going up on the hill and eat green grass and grow fat. Fat.”
LILY: (stirring the stew in a pot on the stove) I’ll tell you this. That’s chicken. That’s chicken here. That’s done.
TOMMY: (over background conversation as Lily continues to stir and then serve the stew in bowls) Dink’s first and second wives—Sarah and Jewel—both died. As he says, “I had three women, and all of them sweet and everything, but the Lord knows best.” Dink and his present wife, Lily, come down the path from their home to spend most days in the house where James and Mike live. This house has electricity, which makes kitchen work easier for Lily.
CECE: James, are you going to come eat?
TOMMY: (continuing) Water is carried from the spring. Besides taking care of her family, Lily does housework for other families nearby. She enjoys singing with Dink and dancing to his music.
DINK: (about the food) “You can say that’s stinkin good.”
TOMMY: (continuing) Lily’s son James plays banjo, but both he and Mike are more interested in their guitar-playing.
CECE: Do you remember the Depression?
DINK: Why, sure.
CECE: Were times pretty bad then?
DINK: What you talking about? Didn’t get but three days of work. Sixty cents a day.
CECE: Good night! What were you doing then?
DINK: Anything you could do. Sixty cents a day, and old Hoover—you know Hoover—I reckon you read about him. Working man didn’t need nothing but a pair of overalls, and sixty cents a day. You know what that was. Sixty cents a day.
CECE: Didn’t you work tobacco some?
DINK: Yeah, I worked tobacco. But God! Then, you know, they didn’t give you nothing but about a cent and a half. Twenty cents, best tobacco, pretty tobacco, that’s all—twenty cents was the highest you got. And ten cent and a penny. If the warehouse man didn’t buy it, he didn’t get nothing. That’s the truth.
(aside) Get away, dog. Smack him out of your way.
CECE: Did people ever play music at the warehouse?
DINK: Oh, yeah. I’ve played a lot of times there. Make a few nickels.
DINK: (to Lily, as he sits, banjo in hand beside her on the front steps of the house) “Black-Eyed Daisy.”
LILY: You know “Black Eyed Daisy,” don’t you?
DINK: (playing dance piece on the banjo and singing)
Send for the fiddle, send for the bow
Send for the Black-Eyed Daisy.
She wouldn’t come and I wouldn’t go,
Almost run me crazy.
LILY: (singing)
How old are you, my pretty little miss?
How old are you, my honey?
I’ll be sixteen in the middle of the week—
I’ll marry you next Sunday.
Send for the fiddle, send for bow,
Send for the Black-Eyed Daisy.
He don’t come ‘til almost run me crazy.
CECE: Okay, now! That’s nice!
TOMMY: (to Lily) Did you learn that from Dink?
LILY: No, sir, I learned that at the school house.
TOMMY: Did you teach it to him?
LILY: Yes, sir.
TOMMY: Well, I didn’t know anybody could teach him anything.
LILY: That’s the truth.
TOMMY: (to Dink) You going to play another one?
CECE (while Dink is tuning): How long have y’all been married?
LILY: Lord, honey, I couldn’t tell you. I was married in March. But I don’t know what year it was. (some of the banter overlaps)
DINK: Ah, we been married about twenty-five years.
TOMMY: Was it before you moved here?
LILY: Yes, I married. Jumped the pine burr and come get married. (laughter) Come across the railroad track and five-o’clock train coming. But that car wasn’t jumping. I said, “Yonder come that five o’clock train.” That man said ZIP!
(Lily slaps her hands to show the speed. Laughter)
DINK (begins playing the banjo and singing the banjo song, “Black Annie”:
I went down to the barroom door,
I called, “Hand me down a four-gallon jug.
Hand it down.”
(Lily rises, walks a few paces. She takes a position to dance briefly with her hands and feet under her body, and a dog yelps when he gets under her. Then she stands, gets offered a seat by Tommy, declines it, and walks out of the frame into the side yard to dance.)
LILY: (speaking) That’s old Rabbit skip, Rabbit hop, Rabbit bit off my turnip top.
DINK (continuing to sing and play):
“Hand it down just as quick as you can.”
(Tommy tries to signal the cameraman that Lily is dancing in the side yard)
Way down, way down, way down in Egypt some time—
I went down to the barroom door, (a dog leaps into the air to catch a fly)
Called for a four-gallon jug,
“Hand it down quick as you can.
Don’t let my man catch me here.” What you say, banjo? (banjo replies)
(the dog is scratching)
And the first shot he did make landed in Black Annie’s side.
Way behind the hill
Poor Black Annie got killed.
Never know death she died.
What you say, banjo? (banjo replies)
(Dink stops, laughs, and reaches out to Tommy.)
CREDITS
(Dink’s song under the credits):
Boil them cabbage down .
Pass ‘em ‘round.
Pass that hoe cake around.
Pass that hoe cake around.
Boil them cabbage down.
Oh, yes, pass that hoe cake around.
Pass that hoe cake around, all around.
Pass that hoe cake around.
Produced By
Cecelia Conway
and
Cheyney Hales
Location Audio: Lee Sloan
Music Consultant and Narrator: Tommy Thompson
Thanks to:
Dink Roberts
Lily Roberts
Mike Roberts
James Roberts
Laurel Urton
Sara Gwinn
Ann Borden
Leonard Rogoff
Tafel Hall
This production made possible by
the North Carolina Bicentennial.
DINK
© 1975 by Cheyney Hales
and Cecelia Conway
