Fattening Frogs For Snakes
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Wednesday, 28 December 2005 10:41 |
Shake Em On Down
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White, born in Houston, Mississippi in 1906 (or either 1909)
was raised up in West Point, Mississippi & then moved to Grenada in the Delta, where he grew up
in his uncle's household trying to play the guitar until the old man
smashed it one night then he started drifting,
playing & singing, over to St. Louis & back to the Delta.
He made his first recordings in Memphis, May 1930, from which but one 78 was released.
Booker moved to a farm near West Point, in 1933 with his new wife
& then in 1935 they moved 20 miles north to Aberdeen (birthplace
of the great Chester Burnett, known professionally as Howlin Wolf). Booker
played on the streets, in juke joints, for backwoods parties, dances & suppers, anywhere
there was some money to be made, or some ladies, equally. Booker says:
All the girls was wild about me, you know,
& one of the girls that was really likin me well,
her boyfriend wasn t so used to girlfriends.
He was a young boy; I was older than he was. And the woman
he was goin with she was older than he was, she was
my age. So, I think I was just a little too famous with the girls . . . .
When I came back from Aberdeen that evenin
I was goin back west to play for my cousin, a dance that night. A cousin
named Buck Davidson. See, my mother was a Davidson before she married a White.
When I got to Prarie a friend of mine said, Booker, he say,
you feel just as close to me as a brother of mine cause you don t bother nobody. Nobody
can t say nothin about you, but they tellin a lie. Said,
But don t you play your guitar on the street today. They re
layin here for you. I said, layin here for me for what? He said,
I done told you a long time ago all these women
goin for you. They want to get you out the way.'
But they didn t know I had that .38 Colt Automatic
with the holster right there in my pocket. I said,
Well, I don t bother them, but if they get ready
I m just as ready to go to their funeral as they are
to go to mine.' So, that's what happened. Just like you see
that store right there, there's about 15 of them linin up
& down there. I m goin to get on old man Curly Allen's log truck,
goin back west. Me & my friend Russ Quinn, we goin to that dance over there. But they
didn t let me get to the truck. They sent this girl's little
boy friend out to start it. Well, he made a slow start. . . .
& Booker White ended up doing two years on Parchman Farm for assault on that boy.
Detroit March 25, 1982/
New Orleans November 20, 1995
3.1.660 |