Good Mornin' Blues transcript

GOOD MORNIN’ BLUES

NARRATED BY B.B. KING

Transcription by Beverly Patterson

The film opens with singing by an unaccompanied voice as blues musician Sam Chatmon walks through a large storage shed among bales of cotton.

Ain't got long, whoa mama

Ain't got long, I ain't got long

Lord, I ain't got long, at the murder's home

Pray for me ah, oh mama

Pray for me, pray for me, yeah

Lord, I got a long holdover, I can't go free

1:39.03 Sam Chatmon finds a chair, picks up his guitar and sings “St. Louis Blues.”

I hate to see that evening sun going down

Said I hate to see, woman

That evening sun going down

I heard the woman I'm loving, she's fixing to leave my town

I'll be feeling tomorrow, baby, like I feel today

Oh you hear me, baby

I'll be feeling tomorrow, baby, like I feel today

I'm gonna pack my suitcase, make my getaway, hey, hey

I know this St. Louis woman, she wears her diamond rings

Said she leads her man around by her apron strings

Get away my window, or knocking on my door

I got a brand new sweetie, I can't use you no more, hey, hey

I got the St. Louis blues, I'm just a blue as I can be

A-pum, beedle-um-pum

Oh, my baby got a heart like a rock cast in the sea

I didn't wanna do

3.47.06

BB KING "The St. Louis Blues", sung by Sam Chatmon, one of the last of the old-time Delta bluesmen. WC Handy, who later wrote and recorded many blues songs, wrote "The St. Louis Blues", but the real blues wasn't written, they were lived, 'cause the blues is more than music. The blues is a feeling, too. The blues is being down, missing a woman, losing a woman, feeling alone, needing a job. Well, going through hard times, wanting to move to a better place. The blues to many people are many things, but to me the blues is life, as was lived in the past, as it is now in the present, and as it will be in the future, as long as people have problems. But the blues actually came from all over the South, wherever Black people played music. But it was here in the Mississippi Delta, probably more than anywhere else, that the blues was born. Willie Brown, one of the earliest of the Delta bluesmen singing "The Mississippi Blues."

05:02.11

Going down to the Delta, where I can have my fun

Going down in the Delta, where I can have my fun

Where I can drink my white lightning and gamble, I can bring my baby home

Don't that Delta look lonesome when that evening sun goes down

Just about drift off

Don't this Delta look lonesome when that evening sun goes down

Well, you'll be looking for your baby, don't know where she could be found

Boy I look all over town for her, you know that

6:11.09

BB KING The flat hot Delta, where around the turn of the century Black people started singing a new kind of music. Well back then, Black people lived much as they had in slave times, where there was no end to the cotton, no end to the flat fields, no escape from the work they'd been doing for what seemed like hundreds of years. The Delta had not changed and would not change for a long time. The blues started here, and here.

[Gestures toward the land and then brings hands to heart]

But the roots go much deeper. To Africa, to the rhythms and the tribal chants of that far away home. And to the years of slavery, when the leader would call out and the workers would follow and the work would go on and on. But the music of the blues is more than rhythm alone. The roots of the blues are in the field holler too, the solitary song of one man alone in the fields, from sunup to sun down.

Call and response work song interspersed with King’s comments

Well it was early this morning, early morning

Lordy, mama

Well early in the morning, in the morning

Well in my right side, Lordy baby

Well in my right side, Lordy sugar

Well I have a misery, Berta

Well on my right side

Well, oh baby

What you want me to do

I'll give you my money, and die for you

I was a-waiting on my sinner chains

BB KING You can hear the rhythm of the work song and the mournful cry of the field holler in "Low Down Dirty Blues" sung by Son House. He and Willie Brown recorded some of the earliest Delta blues.

Mm-mm, mm-mm

BB KING Son lived long enough to enjoy the rediscovery of country blues in the 1960s. Willie Brown, his close friend, and most of the others didn't.

08:39.23

Well, you know the sun is going down, I said behind that old western hill

Ooh, I said behind that old western hill

You know I wouldn't do a thing, not against my baby's will

Mm, well you know that's bad

I declare that's too black bad, mm, I declare that's too black bad

You know my woman done quit me

Whoo man,looked like a whole lotta water to drink

You know she stopped writing wouldn't even send me no kinda word

Ooh whoo, I said she wouldn't send me no kinda word

She turned her little back on me ‘bout some old low down thing she heard

BB KING During the day, many blues musicians would do farm work, chopping cotton, picking cotton, or hauling logs in lumber camps. They were great musicians, legends now, but then they were Black and poor, and that was how they lived. But at night and on weekends, for white dances and for their own in juke joints, small crowded Black bars, they'd play the blues.

Mm, I wake up every morning, feeling 65

10:41.15

BB KING In my day we learned the blues songs from the records and the radio. But back then, blues musicians learned from each other. This is Dockery's Plantation in the heart of the Delta near Greenville. If you had to pick one single spot as the birthplace of the blues, you might say it all started right here. Willie Brown played here, Son House played here. And here at Dockery's another blues singer was working the fields by day and playing his music by night. He was Charley Patton, called the Father of the Delta Blues.

11:15.03

CHARLEY PATTON SINGS

Bout to go to jail about this spoonful

In all a spoon, all that spoon

The women going crazy, every day in their life 'bout

It's all I want, in this creation is a-- I go home, wanna fight 'bout a--

Doctor's dying, way in Hot Springs, Just 'bout a—

These women going crazy every day in their life 'bout a—

Would you kill a man dead, yes I will

Just 'bout a--

BB KING Nathan Beauregard, age 97, a contemporary of Patton's, sings Charley Patton's "Spoonful."

12:09.06

Go to jail about a spoonful

Spoonful, you'll go to jail 'bout

I'd fight my papa 'bout

Whoa, fight my papa 'bout a spoonful

Fight my papa 'bout a spoonful

Fight my papa

Came a little bit stir, stir

Came a little bit stirred up

Oh, give it a stir, stir, ba da da

Had no business starting it

If you know you couldn't keep it up

Nothing but a little bitty stir stir

Came for a little bit

Oh, a little bitty stir

Oh, a little bitty stir, stir

Oh, a little bit

Nothing but a little bit

Don't want no jailhouse, mama

13:22

BB KING Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta. Until very recent times, Southern penitentiaries operated as plantations. The Black inmate lived much as his grandfather had in slavery. And here, the old slave work song survives in prison chants. Booker T. Washington White, Bukka White, served time here. Bukka was a great admirer of Charley Patton, and like Patton, he played music in the juke joints and honkytonks. And like Patton, his life was full of hard times. Hard times led to trouble, and for Bukka White, trouble one night in a juke joint led to Parchman. You can hear echoes of the prison work song in Bukka White's blues.

14:14.28

BUKKA WHITE, SINGING

See, see Mama White

You done done made me love your mind,

Oh, let's not complain

Mama don't 'low no staying out all night long

Play good Bukka now. Let the people know what you're saying

Oh, run hear mama, sit down on your daddy's knee

Tell me mama why you done such mean things

Mama don't 'low no staying out all night long

15:23.03

BB KING The Delta was the cradle of the blues, but blues were being sung all over Mississippi, by men like Ishman Bracey, Bo Carter, Garfield Akers, Sam Collins, Ruben Lacey, Mississippi John Hurt, Son Thomas, and a whole lot more. And throughout the South, from Texas to Georgia and on into the Carolinas, Black men and women had the blues and sang them. People like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, and Huddie Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly. But still, the center was the Delta, home of a man who had the shortest but most spectacular career of any blues singer, one who played with Son House and Willie Brown. One you often hear spoken of as the greatest country blues singer who ever lived, Robert Johnson. I always heard that he was a young man that liked to play his music, liked to be around musicians that played, and of course had a great influence on many of the musicians that we know about today. But one thing, we don't even know what he looked like. All we can guess from his music is that he was a driven man, singing about the hell-hound on his trail. He perfected the technique of using a bottleneck or copper tubing on his strings, making his guitar wail and cry. He'd play the juke joints and dances, chasing women and singing about his hard times with them. Until they say, he was murdered in 1938 at the age of 26, by a jealous girlfriend who poisoned his whiskey. Wanting a woman's a big part of the blues. And in those days, if a Black man lost his woman, he'd lost everything, 'cause he didn't have anything else.

17:21.15

I followed her to the station with a suitcase in my hand

And I followed her to the station with a suitcase in my hand

Well it's hard to tell, it's hard to tell

When all your love's in vain all my love's in vain

When the train rolled up to the stationI looked her in the eye

When the train rolled up to the station and I looked her in the eye

Well I was lonesome, I felt so lonesome

I could not help but cry, all my love's in vain

When the train, it left the station with two lights on behind

Well, the blue light was my blues and the red light was my mind

All my love's in vain, hee-hee,

Whoo Willie Mae

Oh hey, whoo Willie Mae, mmm

Hoo, ee-oh-woe

All my love's in vain

19:36.04

BB KING Robert Johnson had auditioned in Jackson for a record company talent scout, Henry C. Speir. From 1926 till 1940, Speir auditioned hundreds of musicians at his record store on Farish Street, sending the best of them like Charley Patton, Son House, Willie Brown, and Robert Johnson to record, trying to get them $50 a song. Throughout the South of the '20s and '30s, the blues was heard on Race Records, recorded by Blacks for Blacks. The blues were becoming profitable for the big record companies, if not for the musicians, who often sold the rights to a song for a dollar. But for every musician like Robert Johnson who recorded and left a record of their music, there was hundreds who never recorded and remained obscure. But they sang the same blues of lost love and hard times, hoping the next day would bring something better. Hayes McMullan of Tutwiler, Mississippi.

20:33

HAYES McMULLAN, SINGING

Mmmm, hurry sundown, let tomorrow come

I said hurry sundown, let tomorrow come

Said she may bring sunshine, great big drops of rain

Oh, run here mama, sit down on my knee,

You can run here mama, yes, sit down on my knee

Speak some kind word just to give my heart some ease

Yeah, you keep me worried, I'm bothered all the time

Yes you keep me worried honey, bothered all the time

Said you keep me worried, bothered all the time

BB KING Another singer who Henry Speir auditioned was Tommy Johnson. Johnson was the center of a school of blues that developed around Jackson in the '20s. Houston Stackhouse played the jukes with Tommy Johnson, and he remembers the time that he helped Johnson fix a flat, then he drank canned heat with him. Tommy got drunk, and Houston got sick.

23:03.07

TOMMY JOHNSON This one come from back, it's in the Delta, from my daddy's--granddaddy's funeral. He was coming down from working on two tires. Both of his front tires was full of, tire, you know had them stuffed full of rags and things, and having trouble with one of the back tires. So I said, "Well, if you're trying to get that tire all fixed, I will help you fix it." So we stopped and helped him fix the tire, and he said, "I want some canned heat so bad, I don't know what to do." I said, "Well, after we get the tire fixed, we'll go uptown, I'll buy you some canned heat." So we made it to Crystal Springs, I went on in there, I went on into the Crystal Drug Store and got him four boxes, and he carried them out on Camp Street and that's where he made it again. And so, "Give me a couple of big glasses," said, "that'll settle it with me." He said, "Come on to Crystal Springs," he went to playing music in town on the streets. I went to following him there and going on in. Police said, "What got that boy drunk like that?" They said, "Watch the way he's staggering, that boy." They said, "Well, somebody carry him home. Don't wanna put him in jail." So they carried him, they found men, and they carried him and brought him home. They told them to lay him up on the porch. And you talk about sick, old Houston Stackhouse was face down.

25:15.12

Crying canned, canned heat mama

Crying sure Lord, killing me

Crying mama, mama, mama, crying

Canned heat is killing me

Crying canned heat mama, sure Lord, killing me

I woke up, up this morning crying canned heat, Lord, on my bed

Woke up this morning, canned heat was on my mind

Woke up this morning crying canned heat Lord, on my mind

Crying mama, mama, mama

Crying, sure Lord, killing me

Crying mama, mama, mama

Crying, canned heat is killing me

Crying canned heat, Lord mama

Crying baby, ooh, never die

Crying mama, mama, mama

Crying canned heat, round my bed

Woke up this morning, with these canned heat blues

Crying, yes sir, crying take these canned heat blues

BB KING Blues is a lonely song, sung on a front porch at sundown. But blues can be good time music, too. Music to drink and dance to. This is Crawford, Mississippi, home of Big Joe Williams and his custom-made nine-string guitar. And he knows how to use it to get this joint jumping.

27:36.25

BIG JOE WILLIAMS, SINGING

Shame on you, baby, low down, dirty shame

Shame on you-- it's a low down, dirty shame

Pity about a married woman, scared to call his woman's name

I got a woman in Cuba, man, one in Spain

Got woman in London you know, and one in Crawford

Yeah they call it a low down dirty shame

Think about a married woman, scared to call that woman's name

Well, come over here, yeah

Well, baby, a low down dirty shame

Well, baby, it's a low down dirty shame

I'm in love with a married woman, scared to call that woman's name

I'm in love with a woman, but she's in love

Loves some other man, that's it, boy

I'm in love with a woman, she's in love with another man

Can't see but I'm wondering how to love her when I can

I believe my baby done lied

I know my baby done lied, said she never had a man

Now I'm going, my time's up.

Bingo [Audience comment]

'Fore I'll be your dog

'Fore I'll be your dog, I'll get you way down here

Make you walk the dog

Don't leave me here

Another man's gone

Another man's done gone

Another man done gone, like the time before

With the shackles on, gone deep

32:22

BB KING Beale Street, Memphis. It was one big juke joint. Starting in the '20s and through the '30s and '40s, Mississippi Blacks began migrating north, leaving the plantations, looking for jobs in the city. Memphis was the first stop along the way. There was music all up and down Beale Street. WC Handy and his band was playing here. And ragtime, popularized much earlier by Scott Joplin, was still around. Guitarist Hacksaw Ernie from Jackson, Mississippi plays "The Guitar Rag."

33:49.25

Work was hard to find in the Depression years in the South. Some people say the Depression forced the white man to feel what the Black man had felt all the time. But what was hard on the white man, was even harder on the Black man. Gus Cannon was an entertainer who couldn't find work, so he played in traveling medicine shows that sold pills and tonics to cure every ill and featured free entertainment by Black musicians like Gus.

GUS CANNON

I was walking down the runway, here's this runway, holding up a bottle. I said, "Hold your hand up if you want it, one dollar. Why don't you hold your hand up?"

Are you offering a greenback

Are you offering a dime

Are you offering a greenback

Boy, you can't get away with mine, play

The train's at the station, I heard the whistle blow

35:02.26

BB KING Beale Street was also the home of a more urban blues sound, including the music of many women. Women blues singers was usually accompanied by pianists or groups. Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith was playing up north, and in Memphis, Memphis Minnie from Tunica County, Mississippi. In their tradition, Mrs. Van Hunt.

MRS. VAN HUNT, SINGING

I'm the jelly selling woman, I sell it every day

You really don't like me, of course I'm won't give it away

Oh, it's two and a half a saucer, five dollars a cup

10 dollars for the man that have me wrap it up

I'm the jelly selling woman, I sell it every day

Mm, I sell it every day

Oh, the jelly selling woman is heard all over town

I'm the jelly selling woman

I'm heard all over town

You keep on gonna get my jelly roll

Or Lord, time to frown

Mm, whoa that's mighty true, mm

BB KING And still singing the blues in Memphis is Memphis Ma Rainey, who borrowed the name of the great blues woman.

37:33.25

MA RAINEY, SINGING

Yes, I left my good man standing in the back door crying

He's got a home just as long as I've got mine

Yeah, I love you Daddy, and I swear to God I do

I love you Daddy, and I swear to God I do

Do anything for you babyt hat a little gal like me can do

Play it man, get off and play it, man, yeah, all right

I've got a long, tall daddy and a little old daddy too

Yeah, I got a long tall daddy, and a little old daddy too

I'm going to tell my long tall daddy what my little old daddy can do

Yeah

39:30.26

BB KING But Beale Street is not what it used to be. No more music in the park. No people moving around from bar to bar, and no more magic in the air. Furry Lewis, born in Greenwood, Mississippi, is one of the last of the old-time Beale Street bluesmen. His blues borrows from many different elements, but his sound is all his own.

FURRY LEWIS I had a girl one time, her name was Pretty Carla. Pretty Carla left me and went to Brownsville. Take the right-hand road.

And I'm going to Brownsville more, Take that right hand road

Well, I ain't gonna stop walking til I get in my baby's door

And I ain't gonna stop walking til I get in my baby's door

And that woman I love, she got great long curly hair

And that woman I, got great long curly hair

Well her mother, father, don't allow Furry there

Sing that by yourself, guitar, for Furry. Say it again. Curly hair.

But her mother, father, don't allow Furry there

I'm gonna mail me a letter, I'm gonna mail it in the air, Lord knows

I'm gonna write me a, yeah,

And if a man stay here, he can stay most everywhere

When my woman quit me she never said her mom be worried

When my woman-- she never said her mom laying worried, baby

Wasn't nothing she was, something that she heard

Wasn't nothing she, she's, something that she heard

Baby you know you don't want me please don't dog me round

You know you don't want me, baby, you ain't got to dog old Furry around

If you'll give me my clothes, Lord, I'll shake 'em on down

You know, my woman told me, Furry, I don't want you no more

My woman told me yesterday, Furry, I don't want you no more

Well, she's on my dander everywhere I go, Lord knows

She put laudanum in my coffee, she put strychnine in my tea

Put laudanum in my coffee, strychnine in my tea

Turpentine in my biscuit, but she didn't hurt Furry

47:05.12

BB KING While Delta and Beale Street joints were filled with the blues, down in New Orleans Blacks had developed a different music, jazz. Jazz is next of kin to the blues. It often uses the 12-bar blues structure and blues chord changes, but jazz has fuller instrumentation and more group improvisation. Blues came from the country, jazz is the sound of the city. Like jazz, gospel music had a lot in common musically with the blues. Many blues musicians played both gospel and blues, but it wasn't easy for them because the church would have nothing to do with the blues. It's the other side of the coin, the choice a musician has to make, almost between God and the devil, between the church, the fundamentalist Southern church, that permitted no drinking or dancing, and the fast, loose life of the honkytonks. Many blues musicians gave up the blues as they grew older and closer to death. They had chosen the church, they had found a home. Those that stayed with the blues never found a home. They was on the road, traveling gig to gig, town to town, up to Memphis, and beyond to places like Chicago. Highway 61, the main road north out of the Delta.

61, 61 Highway, longest old highway that I know

She runs from New York City, Lord, to the Gulf of Mexico

I walked down 61 till I give down in my knees

Lord, I walked down 61 till I give down in my knees

I asked the good Lord to give me back

Give me back my good gal, if you please

Oh, baby don't you want to go

BB KING Throughout the '30s and '40s, thousands of Blacks looking for work left Mississippi and moved north to Chicago.

Oh, baby don't you want to go

BB KING "Sweet Home Chicago" was not necessarily so sweet. Problems was the same, no jobs, no money.

My sweet home, Chicago

50:08.18

BB KING Instead of shacks, they lived in tenements. Instead of porches, they sang on street corners. Beginning in the late '30s, Chicago began to replace the Delta as the center of blues music. Some of the great Mississippi musicians who moved early to Chicago was Big Bill Broonzy, Sunnyland Slim, Johnny Temple. At first they played the same Delta blues they had at home, it was their music. But in Chicago, they was more likely to play in groups in neighborhood clubs, and their music began to change. After World War II, the country blues that the musicians had brought up from the South would become urban blues with electric guitars, would be played by Mississippi-born musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker.

To my sweet home Chicago

BB KING In this song by Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards and Walter Horton, you can hear the direction urban blues was beginning to take.

For the love of my baby, I'd do anything for you

For the love of my, I'd do anything for you,

Well, the way I love you, I hope you love me too

For the love of mine, I'd swim the ocean wide

And I'd ride the wave, Lord, there'll come a tide

53:25.16

BB KING After World War II came the beginning of the leveling process for the American Black, and the beginning of the end of the country Delta blues. Blacks were starting to gain social and economic status. What was lost was the lonely song of the farmer working the Delta fields. The blues had been born and nurtured in the South of the teens and '20s and '30s, a South that in many ways had been the same for son and father and grandfather. As the South changed and Black men and women began to claim the rights previously reserved for the whites, the old-time country blues was no longer the voice of the Black youth. Times had changed, and so had the music. But the Delta blues would not be—and could not be—forgotten. Because all of it, urban blues, rock and roll, soul and hard rock, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and me too, all of it comes right back here to the Delta. We all learned from the old-time Delta blues. However the blues have changed, its spirit remains. Wherever the blues went, this is where they came from.

54:41.22

SAM CHATMON, SINGING, GUITAR

I worked all summer and all the fall

Trying to find my little old Lenore

But now she's gone and I ain't worried

I'm sitting on top of the world

You need to come running, holding up your hand

I can get me a woman, way you can a man

But now she's gone, and I ain't worried

I'm sitting on top of the world

t have been days, didn't know your name

Oh why should I worry and cry in vain

But now she's gone, and I ain't worried

I'm sitting on top of the world

I went to the station down in the yard

Gonna catch me a freight train when it done got hard

But now she's gone, and I ain't worried

I'm sitting on top of the world

Ah, when I'm dead down in my grave

There lay poor Sam, no women will he crave

I'll be gone, you need not worry

I'll be sitting on top of the world

Credits [see below] scroll over the singing of a worksong, “No More, My Lawd,” by Henry Jimson Wallace from album of field recordings by Alan Lomax: “Negro Prison Blues and Songs recorded live at the Mississippi and Louisiana State Penitentiaries.”

No more, my Lord

Lord I'll never turn back no more

I found in Him a resting place

And He have made me glad

No more, my Lord

Lord, I'll never turn back no more

SAM CHATMON The blues is gonna be here till I'm dead and you and everybody else. The blues will always stand. It's like the world gonna stand, the blues is too. The blues never die, no.

CREDITS

Executive Producer and Director Walt Lowe

Producer Rob Cooper

Writer Edward Cohen

Narrator B.B. King

Cinematographers George Johnson

Walt Lowe

Rob Cooper

Joe Akin

Russell McCullough

Sound J. Chris McGuire

Editor Rob Cooper

Advisor Gayle Dean Wardlow

Archival Film supplied by Adelphi Films

Cinematographers William B. Hatfield

Gayle L. Moore

Sound Gene Rosenthal

We wish to thank:

Sam Chatmon

Houston Stackhouse

Big Joe Williams

Hayes B. McMullen

Furry Lewis

Ma Rainey

Blues Alley

Jim and Amy O’Neal

Joe Rice Dockery

Photographs supplied by:

Library of Congress

Center for Southern Folklore

Living Blues Magazine

Old Courthouse Museum

Memphis Public Library

Mississippi Valley Collection

Tulane Jazz Archive

Chicago Historical Society

David Evans

A Production of Mississippi Authority for Educational Television

MPB Mississippi Public Broadcasting

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1978 | 59mins