Fattening Frogs For Snakes
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Wednesday, 28 December 2005 09:30 |
Decoration Day
for John Hall
Rice Miller went to his grave in the Whitfield Baptist Church cemetary just outside of Tutwiler, Mississippi,
on or around Decoration Day, 1965. He died in his sleep on May 25th of natural causes, meaning
his life ran out before someone with a knife or a gun or some poison could cause him to leave here
before his time. He lived his life to the full, brooking no interference, asking no quarter
& certainly giving none. Robert Lockwood, his sidekick from the 30s & on through the years called him a terrible scound,
which should give you some idea of what his enemies thought of him. But Rice never cared about his enemies, or his friends,
for that matter he did exactly what he wanted to do, & let the devil take the hindmost. He lived fast
for an awful long time, & when he felt his time coming he went back home to Helena to die, where he got his start
playing his harp & singing on KFFA radio. His friends were there, & his sisters, & what family he had,
& when he passed they carried him across the river to Tutwiler & buried him next to the church.
Twelve years later, in 1977, Ms. Lillian McMurray of the Diamond Record Company
of Jackson, Mississippi, who cut his first records for her Trumpet label in 1951, reached into her coffers
& bought him a gravestone & had it erected in the weeds & bramble bushes next to the river
behind the Whitfield Baptist Church just outside of town. Twelve years he went unnoticed & unmarked, a giant in the earth
anonymously haunting the town where W.C. Handy first heard the blues in 1903. Oh Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy,
I m down on my knees by your grave in the dark of night, February 1984,
pulling aside the thorns & the long grass & weeds in the light of the headlamps of my car, with John Hall beside me,
geeked-up pilgrims from the north on our way to New Orleans, stopping by to say good-bye baby, just one more time
Detroit January 21, 1985
3.1.669 |