Fattening Frogs For Snakes
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Wednesday, 28 December 2005 09:29 |
Louisiana Blues
for Frank & Peggy Bach
I'm goin' down in Louisiana baby, behind the sun I'm goin' down in Louisiana honey, behind the sun Well, you know I just found out my troubles just begun
--Muddy Waters
Born McKinley Morganfield in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, April 4, 1913, down on Highway 61 about halfway between Vicksburg & Greenville--
Taken north some 100 miles to Coahoma County by his maternal grandmother at the age of 3 when his mother died & raised there
on the Stovall plantation between Clarksdale & Friars Point where he gained a new name from all the time playing in the mud & eating it:
Muddy Waters-- Genius of the blues, master of verse, voice & guitar & interpreter of songs like this one by the Bard of Vicksburg, Mr. Willie Dixon:
I got a black cat bone I got a mojo tooth I got a John the Conquer root I got to mess wit' you
This is Muddy Waters speaking: "It's just a con job on people's heads, you know, gettin' the fools. And these mojo doctors
was drivin' big cars, owned big homes, 'cuz the peoples was brainwashed. My grandmother & father, their mother & father, was so brainwashed
they thought people could point their finger at you & make snakes & frogs jump out of you, or make you bark like a dog. They said
if they get some of your hair from a certain spot right on the top of your head & bury it, or put it in runnin' water, that could give you a headache.
"Now that could be possible. And I think down in Louisiana they could've had a few things that would do something. But if such a thing as a mojo had've been good, you'd've had to go
down in Louisiana to find one. Where we were, in the Delta, they couldn't do nothin', I don't think. And there is no way I can shake my finger at you
& make you bark like a dog, make frogs & snakes jump out of you. Bull shit. No way. But you know, when you're writin' them songs
that are coming from down that way, you can't leave out somethin' about that mojo thing. Because this is what Black people really believed in at that time. We played so many times,
I'm goin' down in Louisiana, Get me a mojo hand & I tried to make a picture so you could see it, just like you're lookin' at it. When I was singin' it, I didn't believe in it-- no way! But even today,
when you play the old blues like me, you can't get from around that. I'd get so many requests, I could play 'Goin' to Louisiana' every night if I would do it."
And on the record Little Walter says, about going to Louisiana, 'Awww, take me wit'cha, man, when you go!'
Detroit March 11, 1982/ New Orleans December 12, 1995
3.1.669 |