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Fattening Frogs For Snakes
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Saturday, 24 December 2005 12:16 |
Sunnyland Train
for Jack Vaughn & Black Mike Henderson
Blues & gospel
is all I ever did know,"
Sunnyland Slim told Jack Vaughan,
gospel blues & rag
blues & gospel
just like something going
side by side
gospel & blues
go hand in hand . . . .
you take the song [willie] dixon wrote for [little] walter
. . . my babe . . .
what it is
is
. . . this train
dont carry no gamblers . . .
times have changed
but in writing blues
you can change
train
to
plane
just like
when the preacher says something
if its touching to the people
it puts soul
to the public
just like
when you re playing
the blues right
blues & gospel like
two trains runnin side by side.
2
Sunnyland Slim,
born Albert Luandrew
on a farm between Vance
& Lambert, Mississippi,
September 5, 1907
Seven years old, 1914, carried to town
on a mule on saturdays,
listen at the fellas playin
the fiddle & chordin guitars
there was one great big artesian well
& the town was a very busy place
what with the railroad hauling everything
with iron flourish everywhere
food,
instruments, tractors
people
ordering whiskey & beer
trains
was plentiful then
haulin cotton, cotton seed,
sand, coals, lumber
& men in transition
were in boxcars called transients
had names like groun squirrel, lee green,
box car, papa lord god, race riot, milas
davis,
they were musicians
everything was hauled by train
they put ice in the cars to cool the fruits
comin from new orleans
& the sound of the train
was
the lonesome blues
chuggin rhythm
mournful
whistle music
the foreboding hiss of steam
two lights on behind
the dream of the train
was cold raiload steel.
3
Albert picked up his stage name
in the thirties
from that Sunnyland
southland train. Slim told Robert Palmer:
The Sunnyland train
was a fast train,
run right out of Memphis
to St. Louis on the Frisco.
I started singing about it because,
man,
it killed peoples.
They would be
coming to town
along those gravel roads,
farmers
in their wagons
gettin supplies
for their families, & people
would just get caught
comin across the tracks.
The Sunnyland Train
killed my aunt's husband down there,
comin fast
through that brush.
4
Life then,
Sunnyland says,
was fillin
bags of cotton
one-hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred
pounds of cotton
& the clippitty-clop music following
the mule
if I could run into town to t. booker's joint
I could hear the piano, jeff morris,
& he was
a ragtime millionaire
& I followed that sound
half pints of whiskey
& elaborate gamblin hustles
I would listen to the blues
they tell a story
they were playin
all night long papa lord god
I can hear it now
. . . got my hesitation stockin
got my hesitation shoes
& a hesitation woman
sing the hesitation blues
tell me how long . . .
once when i was a little boy
they got to shootin
they throwed me in the corn crib
didnt want me hurt
all of them had them big pistols
they got to frolic,
drink that corn whiskey
& frolic like that
6
So,
concludes Robert Palmer,
tall, skinny Albert Luandrew
became Sunnyland Slim
a man who traveled
far & fast
& could be
dangerous
Detroit
March 12, 1982/
New Orleans
November 18, 1995/
February 5/August 21/September 1, 1999
Special thanks to Jack Vaughan
for the use of his verses
3.1.658 |
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